


Unfinished Fic Ideas: Assassin's Creed (Sweet)

by tap_rat



Series: (Forever) Unfinished Fic Ideas [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Prototype (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Not!Fic, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:22:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 37,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21598351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tap_rat/pseuds/tap_rat
Summary: This is all esama's fault.(The other half of the story is in the comments.)
Series: (Forever) Unfinished Fic Ideas [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1714492
Comments: 381
Kudos: 471





	1. renaissance, infant, accelerated aging

190524 FRI 2144

Being reborn a helpless infant in Renaissance Italy was not his idea of a fun time, to say the least. "Virgin" birth, too, if you believed his mother. He wouldn't be inclined to, drunk that she was, except that was exactly the kind of Isu bullshit that Desmond had come to expect, so who knew really. It hadn't been "virgin" in the sense that she hadn't had sex before, but rather circumstances hadn't let her have sex for those precise months, according to her. So she claimed she could not possibly have gotten pregnant, and yet there he was.

It would have been bad enough as it was, being born to a drunk mother who, when not forced to abstain, held next to no standards for who she wheedled to her bed, with who knew what diseases and the resulting impairments that implied. But then it turned out Desmond wasn't done with the Isu bullshit, because he got accelerated aging thrown in there, too. Thankfully, at least his mother wasn't the most attentive or bright, and so didn't actually notice for a good couple of months. Desmond had no idea how. It was really, really obvious. She was just that bad of a mother, he guessed. If he had been a real baby he probably would have died of neglect.

Unfortunately, when she _did_ notice, she screamed loud enough to wake all the neighbors and tried to bash his head in while calling him a demon. He skedaddled out of there bruised and bleeding, but alive, and spent the next two years of constant growing pains snatching food and hiding from sight while he shot up like a weed.

He _thought_ it would continue until he reached adulthood -- that was what made sense, right? Why reincarnate him with accelerated aging like this if it wasn't going to push him to an adult body? But it didn't do that.

Instead, after those two years he looked around thirteen, and the growth rate started to slow down drastically. By the time another year had passed he had only aged to the appearance of fifteen, and as far as he could tell he was aging just like everyone else now. So, instead of an _adult_ body, the goal appeared to have been merely to get him to a physically capable body, able to defend and take care of himself. Which, okay, not complaining about. Certainly better than being stuck as a toddler. Could have done without being stuck on the streets for three years, but he _was_ an Assassin. Even in a child's body, it wasn't like he had been _that_ helpless.

After three years wandering around Italy for lack of anything better to do, he had definitely eventually found Ezio. Multiple times, even. He had always been _very_ careful, perhaps even paranoid, about keeping his distance. The memory of his mother coming at him screaming _demon_ was something he never really forgot. It made an impression. And while she had been a weak, drunk civilian woman, she had still managed to hurt him before he had gotten away, simply because he had been in a weak child's body.

Ezio was not a weak, drunk civilian. So Desmond kept his distance.

But then Desmond stopped with the accelerated aging, and to all outward appearances looked just like anybody else. The paranoia that had kept him ducking into the darkest shadows and quietest nooks for the past three years gradually relaxed its hold.

And so, three months later, Desmond should not have been surprised to find himself cornered, pinned, and staring up at Ezio Auditore's inquisitive, predatory eyes.


	2. The Dog Was Ezio Auditore All Along!

190413 SAT 1100

Reading "Doggone Days" by ninian where Desmond reincarnates as the corgi in 1800s London, trying to get to the Shroud with the Frye twins in hopes that it'll give him a human body back. Just imagining that actually happening. And them thinking --

Holy crap! The dog was the reincarnation of Ezio Auditore the whole time!

And then Desmond going. Shit.

Noooo. I'm. Miles. From. America. Um.

And they just. Side-eye him. Riiiiiiiight.

Because you know he cusses out in Italian when he isn't paying attention. Because Italian is just so much more _satisfying_ to him now for some reason, he doesn't know why Shaun shut up.

And the way he kind of blankly looks at 'modern' 1800s fashion before jerking his head up and saying loudly what I don't need help I have obviously worn these sort of things a thousand times before get out, and slamming the door. And then proceeding to spend way too long before finally coming out of the room looking obviously uncomfortable in 'modern' clothing though neatly enough put together (thank god for the very little he actually could pull from Haytham and Ratonhnhaké:ton to help, though he still had to figure an uncomfortable amount out on his own).

Just a hundred little tells like that, plus the fact that he does know late 1400s Florentine Italian as a native and does slip into it automatically if he isn't paying attention and they manage to sneak it into conversation. Or he's drunk.

And then there's the party night where they demand a dance and he says he has no idea how to do their dances with no shame whatsoever cause he's already drunk and one lady finally challenges him into letting her teach him and the charm flips _on_ and the entire _bar_ goes breathless with the smolder as the lady pretty much has to fight to keep her knees from buckling the whole time.

The thing is, before he got kidnapped Desmond was a very good-looking and charismatic bartender at a pretty high-end bar. He _had_ to be charming for that job, dealing with rich jerks all night like he was. And then he got Ezio Auditore on top of that, decades of him, the biggest influence of all his ancestors by far.

So, when he's drunk, and he's smiling at a pretty woman, he is _pretty frickin charming_. And since none of these people actually knew Ezio Auditore personally, only by reputation, they can't tell the difference. Plus, this is long after his death, and they know he was faithful to his wife to the end. So the fact that Desmond is not interested in flings the way a younger Ezio was is also not a huge surprise to them. They think this is an _old_ Ezio reincarnated into a younger body, after all. Matured, and no longer chasing skirts. Faithful to his young wife, even after death. Just, you know. Still charming as all _hell_ , apparently, even in spite of that.

So at the end of the dance, which he learns without much effort and _sensualizes the hell out of_ simply by being himself and not even doing anything, because he's got Ezio's Italian sexiness and 21st century New York liberal sensibilities guiding his movements and words. He bows over her hand, still smoldering without effort, then walks away with the sexiest walk, that jut of the hips, and excuses himself from the bar party even as he grabs some wine to take with him, telling them to enjoy their distant dancing (he'd asked where the fire, the passion was during the dance and dang near set fire to some underwear), but that he would get some air and enjoy the stars, and just leaves. Very hot. Also perfectly in line with the legend of an older, mature Ezio Auditore, and _completely reinforcing the narrative_ , because he was absolutely oblivious to the fact that he kept slipping into an Italian accent throughout pretty much the whole dance. And also using Italian endearments when talking to the lady dancing, because it was just such an Ezio situation that Desmond's drunk mind slipped a bit without noticing.

Like. There is _no way_ he is ever going to convince _anyone_ that he is not Ezio Auditore doing a really unconvincing American accent. Completely disregarding the fact that it is in fact a genuine American accent. They are convinced it is a _terrible_ American accent. Just because.

It becomes a thing. Ezio Auditore and his terrible American accent, saying Noooooo, my name is Miles; I have no idea what you are talking about, Madonna. I mean, My Lady. I am from New York, can you not tell? And saying this with a thick Italian accent pretending to be a mangled attempt at an American accent. It's a terrible impression, and they can never get through the joke without breaking into cackling.

Seriously, it's a thing.

The fact that Desmond has basically _all_ the Assassin skills does _not_ help him. And speaking Arabic, with Ezio's very well known obsession with Altaïr's legacy, that makes sense to them, too. Anything that doesn't fit the narrative, they can make fit the narrative, because it doesn't fit anywhere _else_ does it? Reincarnated time-traveler from the _future_ is not where one would go from that. All the evidence _really does_ point to the reincarnation of Ezio Auditore. He _knows everything_ about Ezio Auditore. There is no other explanation, from their point of view. And Desmond isn't going to tell them the _truth_.

Not when he knows _very_ well that future voyeurs, _most of them Templars_ , are perfectly capable of spying on the past at any time, anywhere, as long as one or more participants would at some _future_ point have children. There is no _possible_ safe way to discuss the future with anybody in the past, knowing that future Templars could so very easily scoop up _anything_ he said with one single Animus subject, willing or otherwise.

All it would take was his _name_. He honestly should have used anything _but_ his actual last name, but he'd panicked. He had thankfully at least _spelled_ it differently -- he'd used a French spelling since it could at least sound sort of French.

Once he'd actually had time to _think_ and not freaking _panic_ , and he had realized how much he _could not let Abstergo realize Desmond Miles of 2012 had time-travelled to the 1800s_ , he had very, very reluctantly also realized that the stupid Ezio reincarnation story really, honestly was probably his best bet.

Which was when he let the Italian accent start creeping in a bit more, and just... stopped fighting so hard. Also concentrated on focusing his skill-sets so he only showed what he thought would be appropriately acceptable for anyone who _was_ spying via Animus. The Animus messed up a lot of things, fudged a lot of details -- he knew that better than anyone -- but some things even it wouldn't miss, so he tried not to be _too_ obviously anachronistic. In the wrong direction, anyway. He let himself gripe all he wanted about the crap that had gotten _worse_ since Ezio's time -- and some stuff honestly had. Some things would always get worse with time, just as others got better. But he put a lockdown on anything from the future and he _kept_ it that way. Not a word.

Sure, it made the whole in-joke of Ezio's absolutely terrible 'noooo, I'm not Ezio Auditore, I have no idea what you are talking about, look over there' even worse; but honestly that actually was kinda funny once he stopped fighting it.

Staring right at them with sober eyes and a perfectly straight face as he insisted he was absolutely serious, no really he was, why are you laughing -- some of them looked like they were about to break some ribs they were trying to suppress the laughter so hard. It looked like they were convulsing, it was that bad.

So, yeah, that actually was pretty funny.

190417 WED 1026

Possibly still back in that first argument about his identity, Desmond thumbed his left ring finger absently, then blinked and looked down at it, and shot his gaze back up to look at them with a look of aha and said his finger wasn't burned with the brand, except he would explain in WAY too much detail, obviously knowing way too much about exactly how the Italian Renaissance Brotherhood branded their members. And they would just counter all his counters. You got the lip scar at seventeen right? Sixteen. And the brand when? I-- Ezio Auditore got the brand at twenty seven and he'd narrow his eyes at them for that one, and so on, etc. So they'd say so there, you're obviously twenty or thereabouts, and he'd squeak because he knew he was twenty five thank you but he couldn't actually say that obviously, and he'd find a mirror and mutter that he didn't think he looked that young and they'd laugh because they thought he definitely looked that young.

Because 1800s London medicine may have been better than Renaissance Italy or the Crusades, but it was still pretty bad by modern standards, so he still looked pretty good to their eyes. They thought his body looked a few years younger than it actually was, twenty instead of twenty-five.

So that was another objection out the window.


	3. prototype, assassination, control chip

190208 FRI 0420

The dirty room in the empty, rundown building with the newly broken window, was almost quiet. A mostly man-shaped being loomed over a thin young man, holding him against a stained wall with alien-looking arms of black and red tentacles wrapped around him in a punishing grip. The being's head was almost completely human-looking as it bent close to the other's face, only the inside of the mouth showing writhing black and red during vicious whispers. Demanding, threatening.

The young man looked very human in comparison as he stared straight back, dark brown eyes only a bit too wide, face almost successful in holding calm as he spoke with a voice that almost sounded casual, "Well, if you wouldn't mind removing the computer chip they use to force m-"

The young man abruptly convulsed in violent, painful seizures.

The black limb wreathing the rigid, shaking body immediately pulsed in response. Tiny threads of black bloomed over the young man's skin, stretching and branching like blood vessels, or nerves, or roots.

The seizure stopped as abrupt as it started, the young man hanging limp and still.

The black threads slowly withdrew from now-pale skin, and there was one, two, weak jerks. Blood started a red trail from his nose.

The only sign that Desmond Miles wasn't dead was the faintest breathing pressing against the limb encircling him.

Meanwhile, Alex Mercer stared with _intent_ at the tiny square of bloody metal and silicon sitting on his fingertip.

-

191202 MON 2020

<https://fanfiction.net/s/10726804/1/Common-Enemy> inspired a slightly similar idea, but with different reasons and characterizations. The idea of Vidic keeping Desmond longer than a week and somehow forcing him out on actual assassination/sabotage/theft/seduction/blackmail/investigation/intimidation/etc missions was surprisingly appealing, but the rational to justify that is difficult. The entire point of the Assassins was that they could, in fact, evade the Templar Order's grasp even with its massive governmental and corporate penetration. That's what Assassins do. So for Desmond to be sent out on his own with no fear of him just _vanishing_ the second they blinked, the Templars must have done something seriously impressive and horrifyingly invasive to maintain control. Nothing else makes sense. And Desmond definitely wouldn't have any other Assassins working with him, not unless they too were under the same exact form of control (not counting Lucy).


	4. Grey Island, 1

#### SPYING THE PAST

When Desmond dies, he opens his eyes to the Grey. The thing is, he's only human (mostly), and if you stay too long in the Grey as a simple human mind you start to disintegrate. It's almost automatic to close his eyes in self-defense and blink into an Animus Island of his own.

It's better than Clay's, because this isn't actually the Animus. Desmond is dead in the Grey, so he's got access to a hell of a lot more resources than AI-Clay had.

After a suitable time (weeks? months? longer? time doesn't mean the same thing in the Grey) decompressing from the trauma he had been ignoring while trying to save the world, Desmond's attention drifts outward again from his own mind and emotions.

He notices darting hints of scenes from the outside world in the mists of the Grey, and starts paying more attention. After some effort, he learns how to open windows so he can see out into the real world. Again, though, this is the Grey, and he is dead -- time doesn't have quite the same grip. So opening windows to watch his ancestors in the past is actually pretty easy. Strangely, opening windows into the present -- after his death -- is infinitely harder. He can only get fleeting glimpses there. Surprisingly enough it's not in metaphorical flames, despite Juno clearly being free, so yay for self-sacrifice.

He spends a lot of time examining the parts of the past he never got to look closely enough at, always being rushed to the next memory, and finally takes the time to look for answers to questions he never got answered before. He learns... a lot. He has nothing but time.

He has to have more than just a vague idea of _what_ he's aiming for before he can find it, though, which excludes the vast bulk of random history. The more intimately familiar he is with something, the easier it is to find. So his ancestors are, by far, the easiest ways to go spying on the past. Once he has a foothold on a particular area, it's easier to branch out from there, but first he has to have the foothold. So his exploration through time is, unsurprisingly, a bit spotty, even if he does try to fill in holes as he finds them.

He had relaxed a lot after some experimentation revealed that time here was relative. He had opened "present day" windows that showed only seconds passing there, when days or weeks had passed for him. He really could spend however much time he pleased here without worrying about missing something there. So he does, learning anything and everything he wants, as he finds the resources to learn them.

Though this personal Animus Island doesn't actually let him live his ancestors' lives in first person like Clay's did. He _can_ , after a great deal of effort, imagine up whatever environments he prefers, so that helps, but he's still alone there.

#### DREAM TALKING

At some point after watching through windows as his ancestors go through tough awfulness that is somehow even more visceral when he isn't 'playing' it from behind their faces anymore, he left the portal up when one of them fell asleep. He was just watching them fall asleep, sad, wishing, wistful.

And the scene _changed_. Altaïr opened his eyes, looked at Desmond, and _saw_ him.

Some more experimentation revealed that dreaming people can see and hear him through the portals. Desmond is thrilled, even with the fact that they don't remember the dreams when they wake up, he doesn't care, he gets conversation and that's all that matters. He spends so much time in spirited discussion with a _very_ suspicious Altaïr.

They don't remember the dreams afterward, but once they see him again in another dream there _is_ a vague sense of recognition and familiarity. Being a dream, this is often taken for granted, and this makes taking any given discussion just a little further even easier, which Desmond delights in taking great advantage of.

Then Desmond figures out how to kind of stretch out the two-dimensional windows into three-dimensional rooms that still function, but now let him stand inside them like walled balconies or porches. And if he can lure a dreamer in, they can enter too.

He learns how to make his window-rooms very inviting to whoever is dreaming at any given time, populating the place with set pieces and dressing to create whatever environment would most likely entice them over. He learns how to adjust his own clothing, posture, expression, tone, and demeanor to fit whatever they are feeling at the time, and how to convince them to come into the room with him -- because if they _do_. Oh, if they do come into the room -- then they _remember_.

Not awake, of course; they still forget the dreams when they wake. But the next time they dream, if he can convince them back into the room again, the second they pass over the threshold their eyes will light up with recognition and they will _remember_ every single second they have spent in those rooms with him before.

He LOVES it.

Thankfully he had worked out all the kinks of talking with these particular people through the regular two-dimensional windows before, so he manages to maintain a good relationship with pretty much all of them while in the three-dimensional rooms.

Though some people, honestly, you keep around just to heckle.

#### PARADOX WORRY

He notices... eventually... that his fiddling with dreams is not... without consequence. He had thought it was harmless at first, merely his own mind conjuring illusions to soothe himself.

But the longer he spends on his Island, establishing himself deeper without dispersing into the Grey, the more solid and more of a Fact he makes himself there as he pokes just the tip of his nose into the world through dreams, the more he comes to question that.

The longer he sits there in the Grey, the more he starts to just... know things. Feel things. Things he shouldn't know, but he _KNOWS_ them all the same. Feels them, all the same.

It starts to make him uneasy. Starts to concern him. Starts to make him pay a bit closer attention to how his ancestors are acting before and after his little visitations, in comparison to when he started this whole mess.

He notices that though they don't seem to consciously remember the dreams he shares with them, something does seem to cross over nonetheless. The vaguest of impulses, gut feelings, instincts, that sort of thing, and typically only for the strongest of emotional shifts they might have experienced while dreaming with him. In general, though, they just seemed... happier, more settled, after waking from a dream with him. Or at least less traumatized and stressed than they by all rights _should_ have been after some of the things they had lived through.

He spends something like two figurative months holed up on his island doing nothing but frantically thinking and trying to figure out what was going on. At the end of which he expends a considerable amount of energy opening windows to the outside world from the moment of his death onward, what he still thought of as the "present" even as time out there continued to march on. He looks, perhaps a little obsessively, for any changes he might have inadvertently made to the timeline. It was pretty clear that any timeline changes that _were_ happening weren't actually reaching his dead self out here in the Grey. He doesn't care all that much about checking if his own life was the same before his death, but afterward was the whole _point_. If he had somehow screwed things up...

The whole ordeal was exhausting. After which he finally realizes he could have just dream-talked to his still-living father this whole damn time and feels very stupid.

It takes him a bit longer to build up the _will_ to actually talk to his father, but he does eventually do that. It is still exhausting to open a window to any time after his death, but doing so inside an ancestor's dream is _less_ exhausting, so he calls it a success. And yeah, feels stupid for not thinking of it earlier.

He goes with just a simple two-dimensional window, as he honestly isn't sure he would have the energy to pull off a full room post-death like this. He still isn't sure why it's so much easier to interact with the more distant past than any time after his death. You would think the "present" would be the easiest thing of all to look in on, but it was the _hardest_.

A few dream talks with his father settle most of his fears. He is indeed able to get quite a bit more information from Bill than from the brief scans he'd gotten through brute-forced waking world windows. Dreams were an infinitely more forgiving medium to work with.

Thus reasonably satisfied that he hadn't caused catastrophic paradox -- because he really had been _very_ free with some very damning information if it had in fact been noticeably affecting the timeline -- Desmond relaxed for the first time in months.

He maintained a cautious dream-eye on the time after his death after that, but otherwise allowed himself to slowly return to business as usual. This was, after all, how he kept sane. As long as it wasn't actually causing harm...

And so he was a little more careful with his words, kept a bit better watch on what he was saying to whom. But mostly Desmond didn't really have to change much, and only a couple of his visitors even noticed. He freely explained what and why to them, as this particular explanation wouldn't carry enough emotional weight to subconsciously affect their waking actions.

Telling Giovanni that Uberto was a Templar... that would have been a problem, had he done so in a Room, with its greater impact. Thankfully, he'd only done that through a Window, and so Giovanni had no memory of that conversation in their current dreams.

Desmond would _like_ to spare them their fates, but he felt like the Calculations might twist and start shrieking nothing but DOOOOOM if he did so. He certainly knew better than to start playing around with causality with the fate of billions resting on a _guess_.

So instead he acted as their confidant, their confessor, their closest friend, their lover, their brother, their father, their son, their enemy, their savior, their _whatever_ they needed at the time. He was very good at playing a part by now. He couldn't risk doing anything else to help them. But he could do this.

And it did help them. He made sure to check, made _sure_ that he didn't affect the timeline by doing this -- but he _was_ helping them.

They didn't remember the dreams he gave them, but they woke from them better than they went to sleep. Calmer, steadier, healthier, more whole. More than mere sleep could account for. More than their Isu genetics could account for. Desmond had _checked_.

It had taken some very creative twisting of a part of his brain he hadn't known he could twist, but he had actually opened a window onto his ancestors from _before_ he'd started Dreaming with them, and they were _worse off_. How he managed to get a glimpse into the timeline before he had altered it Desmond honestly wasn't sure -- was it his own personal timeline's record? That felt right...

Anyway, regardless, he _was_ making a difference. Not _too much_ of a difference, though, and he was keeping a very careful eye on the dreams after his death just to make sure of that. And something else he couldn't quite make name of. A feeling in the back of his attention, like absently, but carefully, keeping a hand on a very important, very large pulse that mustn't tremble too much...


	5. renaissance, abo, vatican gone, 1

190321 THU 1240

There is one moment of perfect blinding white light that every single living being in Rome knows, whether their eyes are open or not, and then the world rocks under the thunderous clap that shakes the world.

The Vatican is _gone_.

There is no crater, no ruins, no conventional marks of devastation. There is instead a perfectly level plane of ash, softer than snow and almost as white, a perfect circle circumscribing a great area where _no one_ will dare to trespass.

No one except the Assassins -- because the only structure disturbing that perfect circle is Minerva's temple at the exact center, the Papal Staff just _hovering_ right there in front of the open entrance of the Vault with the Apple of Eden glowing in its cradle, where _everyone in Rome can see it_.

Not even lake of ash can hold them back for more than half a minute.

Not a single one of them doubt what happened. This was exactly the sort of reason they had so desperately been fighting to keep the Pieces of Eden out of the hands of the Templars all along. Each and every Assassin that saw the circle of ash where the Vatican once stood felt something in their hearts harden and cool. Many associates of the Assassins who had known of their fight and cause, but never quite felt it themselves, felt it then, felt that same hardening. In the weeks that followed, the Brotherhood would see their resources stretched thin with a surge of recruits sharing a certain grim set to their mouths, their eyes.

They will _all HATE_ the Templars.

But that is then. Now, Ezio and Machiavelli and Mario (for in this universe Mario survived Monteriggioni's fall) are all _running_ across the ash. Ezio is in the lead, because he alone has actually _been_ in that vault before, seen the impossible that lies inside it, and has believed its words. Mario follows behind, terrified but determined. Machiavelli is last, his need to know pushing him more than an actual belief in what Ezio had actually relayed of what had been said in that Vault before, and of course the need to keep those secrets out of any other hands but the Assassins'. Naturally Machiavelli's motives are the most complicated.

Ezio all but flies over the ash. He had tested it with a stick at first, expecting it to be deep and engulfing once he had lowered himself down low enough to touch it -- the entire area would be a lake once enough rain came. But the ash was only an inch, if that. The ground beneath was uniform... glass. Perfectly smooth, perfectly black. That had been what had frozen Ezio. For a full half minute he just... stared. Then he _forced_ himself to _not think_ , pushed up and started running for Minerva's Vault. There was no time.

Now he grabs the Apple as he barely slows at all in passing the Staff, expecting it to lower itself into the ground as it had before -- and stumbles into a wall when the Staff promptly clatters to the ground. Panting against the wall, he stares for but a moment before pushing himself into a lunge and scooping up the Staff before whirling to resume his dash into the open Vault. Golden light beckons from within, the arcane and alien designs of Those Who Came Before never so stark and visible as now, all the stone of the Vatican _burned_ off of Minerva's Vault. Her Temple, Ezio supposed, now. Or... again. He had no doubt there would be worshippers, now. Again.

The designs could be seen etched beautifully, if alien, all along the outside of the building as well, now that it was bare of any human structure to hide it. They all glowed gold at the moment, every single line. There would be no hiding this.

It took but a moment longer for Ezio to cross the hall to the inner Vault chamber itself, and there the goddess herself already stood, her back to him, looking upon something on the floor. She looked... sad? How could a goddess like _her_ look sad? She who spoke of the destruction of her entire world with nothing but cool calm on her face, who spoke of it coming again to burn the entire world _again_ with nothing more than duty pressing in her voice? How could she be _sad_?

Then Ezio was at the threshold of the Vault, hearing the footsteps of others behind him but his attention followed what Minerva was looking at. She looked down, quiet, and yes, sad, at the form of a boy, a young man really, naked and sprawled in the very center of the Vault.

He was... badly hurt.

And...

Ezio breathed deeper.

No.

Those _bastards_. He would _KILL_ \--

Ah. Except they were all already dead now, weren't they?

The ash outside had been... oddly sterile in scent, considering just what it had to be. Who it had to be.

But inside this room, Ezio could only scent family. Also Machiavelli had just arrived and was hanging back a bit, but right here? Right here, with Mario hovering behind him in the hallway starting up a growl as he scented the same thing, and Ezio in the doorway feeling as if he is floating almost dreamily on top of something too large and hot to be called mere rage, and that boy laying broken in the middle of the room, with the scentless goddess standing a pale sorrowful witness --

There is only the smell of Auditore in this room.

The TEMPLARS had HIS SON.

Ezio idly notes that he is trembling.

Without his conscious direction, he is moving forward, now kneeling at the boy's side. His right arm is badly burned. The smell of cooked human is distinct. Ezio distantly hears Mario move up to the doorway now that Ezio was in the room.

Did they give him that scar on his lips in mockery of Ezio? Did the boy even know why he had been given it? Did he know who he _was_? Had he been _raised a Templar_?

Would Minerva be so sad, if he were?

Ezio flicked his gaze up to her without otherwise moving. He did not know how he would affect a goddess. He did not know if it was possible at all. But he would certainly try, if necessary.

"What is this?" Ezio asked, very softly.

Mario's growl abruptly cut out.

But Minerva is looking only at the boy, a defeat in her eyes that some small part of himself that he cannot hear right now is terrified to see. She pays no more attention to Ezio than before, and only says, quietly, "Put the Apple into his right hand."

A larger part of Ezio's mind goes blank at that. "What," he says.

She glances briefly at him, and in her eyes is the same exact impatient dismissal from before, and then she is gazing as the boy again with that ever more terrifying sorrow. "The Apple," she simply states, with only the expectation of obedience in her tone.

But this is _son_. Ezio's hand curls like a claw on the Apple in his own right hand, convulsively. She looks up at him again, and this time frowns. "Prophet," the goddess states. "Do you wish him to live?"

Ezio stares at her, and swallows dry. "Why," is all he can say, because yes of _course_ he does but this does not make _sense_.

She gazes at him with no emotion that he can sense, inscrutable and utterly alien. "He has already died once to save humanity, Prophet," she says, calmly, as if this if nothing. Ezio stares at her, his mind blank, and dimly aware of thumping and a clatter from the hallway.

"Put the Apple in his right hand," she repeats, and merely waits, staring him in the eye with implacable alien will.

Ezio's right hand raises, and hovers over the boy's blackened own. He is achingly aware of the faint, too-shallow breaths raising the boy's chest. The boy's scent, so heavily stained with his own charred skin that no others clues remained past the base pure note of himself and _agonizing_ pain. The scars. The intricate and very _large_ brand on his left arm. The fact that he had no expressed secondary gender, despite appearing otherwise fully grown, and just what that might _mean_. What they had to have done to him.

The faint, faint, shallow rising of his son's breaths, getting slower.

He gently put the Apple into his palm.

-

Jupiter comes and tells him to put the Staff onto his chest, 'we won't have much left after this', blah, glowing gold, bright, creeping lines of gold light up Desmond's skin, he's being made more machine to last the time, hibernation and stuff for compatibility, stuff no Isu would deign for, obvious sacrificial savior comparisons, desmond opens his eyes during and talks to minerva with familiarity, both minerva and jupiter actually talk to desmond directly and have to ask permission, in the sense that he has to accept the mantle before what they are doing to him will succeed and fully take, his arrival here to this universe has already disturbed the Calculations to the point that the future Desmond of this reality would not meet the Eye so that option was out, it was this or nothing they didn't have a choice, so Desmond has to accept even if he didn't want this and they know and they're sorry they never meant this for him either, they are fully aware this is cruel, though thankfully they aren't aware of how adaptable humans can really be (or they wouldn't have been so blindsided by the rebellion in the first place?). They think making him mostly machine is this huge curse but for humans it's really not a big deal, Desmond's more upset about the immortality bit, which they do vaguely get on an intellectual level as they know humans are meant to be pack animals and such. In this world even more than Desmond's own. Deliberately. So they must have built in something to assuage that need, maybe a way to extend his pack's life or keep their minds with him or something, or he would go insane and they can't have that. Later. Jupiter calls him Cipher, but I don't know if Minerva calls him Desmond in front of Ezio. Kind of pointless to avoid it with the whole lightshow, so sure. Obvious savior parallels.

Or, what if the Apple and Staff came into contact with Desmond on their own, without Minerva and Jupiter having to show themselves visually? Desmond's eyes are closed, and they aren't communicating with the others. Talking through the Apple alone should be possible. Hm.

That would leave Desmond forever under suspicion. Forever. Without an actual goddess (and god) directly anointing him as a savior figure, he would never get out from under the suspicion of having directly caused the circle of ash. People are like that. Even in this pack-focused world, they would not kindly take to traitors.

The pack behavior was built in from the beginning, but the only 'Alphas' were meant to be the Isu. Then the war happened, and the whole Alpha-Beta-Omega thing came about as a result of genetic biological weaponry warfare. After the Flare, attempts were made to stabilize the system, make it actually work since much of the damage could not now be removed from the genome with many of the 'pure' genetic stock dead. They worked with what they had. More Alphas were introduced via cross-breeding and retroviral treatments, though the treatments always produced weaker versions, naturally. Betas, as a result of the biological weapon released during the war, were rendered almost sterile, and it took a great deal of genetic treatment to get them back to functioning fertility again, but they did it. Never to the degree that the original human breeding stock once enjoyed, however. Omegas, deliberately engineered in response to the Beta plague and perhaps overly successful as a weapon against Isu 'Alpha' pheromones, gratefully allowed themselves to be brought back to a more moderate level of function, though the treatment was not fully successful -- in part because they couldn't afford to be. Projections suggested that full success of treatment would result in full sterility, and due to the unfortunately still-low Beta birthrate, they needed the boost too much. Omegas really were a phenomenal design, and all the more for _not_ being Isu-made.

It took many centuries of constant work, but over the generations, the dynamics gradually came to an equilibrium that mostly worked. It was an uneasy peace, but it was a peace, and that was more than could have been expected, once.

None of which was remembered at all by Ezio's time, but which was explained in detail in the data left to Desmond by the Apple, whenever he was able to eventually read it. Which was not anywhere in the first few months. Possibly years.

The Apple doesn't do much physically, really, it's a data device. That's what it did with Desmond; it gave him a _crap_ ton of data and in so doing it may have rewritten a bit of him, but that bit was ripe for rewriting because of the Eye. And then Jupiter added the Staff and twisted things, using energy they couldn't _really_ afford to waste but screw it what were they going to do anyway right? So that helped. But really they just did a lot of data dumping, only changing a bit to help with that.

The data is to help Desmond find the necessary stuff to actually change himself into the Machine he is going to have to be to do his job, now that the future Desmond of his world is not going to be able to. Locations and lock codes and stuff, sure, to replace tools that were destroyed, but also the language and knowledge to use the technology within appropriately to do what he needed to do. Minerva and Jupiter wouldn't have this much energy available to them again until and unless Desmond actually managed to build something else to use the Eye's power sources (since they clearly could not use the Eye itself with Juno there), since there was already so much used or something? And this was just the best time for alterations since he was fresh from the Eye or something I dunno, whatever, so they burned a _lot_ to get as much information as possible into him as quickly as possible and it hurt like the dickens. They were really setting up the paving the way, you know? Setting up the outline for future improvements. 'This is the blueprint,' that sort of thing, and that took a lot.

But in the end it was still _mostly_ an information transfer, so at the end Desmond is left mostly human with a bunch of fancy lines and some healed burns. It was more than just his arm, here. The arm was the worst, but it traveled. And also the bump from his universe was not kind. Frostbite on top of the burns, that was nice. Jupiter used the Staff for that? How? That was not the Staff's purpose. How. He broke it, that's how. So Minerva just set her Vault to always-open and resolved to ignore anyone who didn't bring an Apple in. Or who wasn't Desmond.

Anyway, they could easily do all this without actually showing themselves to the Assassins? But then, as mentioned, Desmond would never be out from under suspicion.

But it's not like Ezio is going to explain the whole 'Messiah of the world, my son!' to anybody _anyway_ because way to paint a target, people... Though, even just to his own people, to avert suspicion? Hm.

Could they, theoretically, sneak Desmond out without pretty much everybody, everywhere, knowing exactly what they did, when everybody here is a scent hound? Really? Didn't think this through.

Their _only_ chance would be to just hope everybody was too terrified to go near the place to check until the scents had already faded away, and that's a silly hope.

Desmond wouldn't really need the Staff to open the Vault. Minerva wouldn't care about anybody else. She would totally close the thing after them. Desmond's scent isn't anywhere else. If Ezio wraps him up well enough... They have scent obscuration, obviously. Just like smoke bombs. Just scrunch Desmond up so it looks like they're carrying a treasure chest between two of them instead of a person's body as they run away. Run straight to a safe place while Machiavelli distracts Rome. Could be done.

They'd then have to dig up a _lot_ of bullshit the Templars had been hiding to obscure that Ezio's long lost son was merely one amongst many things revealed in the aftermath, rather than THE thing revealed. Hm.

190713 SAT 1055

Then they sneak his son out of the Temple that closes and darkens behind them. He is bundled and hidden, strapped flat to Mario's back beneath his cloak with scent obscuration masking their dash back to safety the whole way. Machiavelli made sure to scrape their tracks as they went, so no one would be able to tell from their footprints that they were carrying something much heavier than a Staff back with them.

There is no way to hide the now closed Temple in the middle of where the Vatican used to be. There is no way to hide that the Assassins had run to it and taken something from it. But they can hide _what_ they took.

And they simply never speak of what Minerva and Jupiter did there, not even among their own. As far as they are concerned, the Templars had kidnapped and experimented upon Ezio's son in an attempt at forcing answers and power that were not theirs to have from the Temple using the Pieces of Eden, and it had _backfired_. Everyone had seen how it backfired.

This was, as far as Ezio, Mario, and Machiavelli knew, completely correct. They just neglected to inform anyone of the _rest_ of the story. That Desmond had been Minerva's Chosen Savior, and in disrupting his task, however the Templars had done so with their experiments, they had put the very world at risk of destruction. And that the gods themselves had been forced to find a different and much more difficult, longer path for his son to take for the world's salvation.

They just... didn't tell anyone that part. If they could help it. Some of them, like Leonardo, Claudia, and La Volpe, recognized the name Desmond and demanded answers until the three were forced to give at least some. But they tried to limit the reach of that knowledge, and once those few did finally hear their answers, they understood why.

How did a person begin to comprehend something this big. And horrible. Ezio smelled of such tremendous rage whenever the subject was even hinted at in his hearing that no one doubted it certainly would not be dealt with for several years. Desmond would need the time to recover anyway, no matter what great burden lay on his shoulders.

Ezio certainly wouldn't let them even think of doing anything else.


	6. post-death, no-isu, effectively alien, 1

#### NEW WORLD

191218 WED 1210

After the Eye, Desmond ended up on his own serving drinks in a bar again.

There _were_ Assassins (and Templars) in this world, he had checked pretty thoroughly, but they were... different. There _wasn't_ any super solar flare. He had super double checked to be sure on that one, just to be sure someone hadn't blocked or shielded it like he had, but it had just never happened here. There had never been an Animus Project, either.

He hadn't actually been able to find any recent evidence of the existence of any Isu artifacts at all, actually. And the Animus had been derived from studying Isu artifacts. The last mentions of things that sounded like Isu artifacts were the old myths and legends of the "gods" and their champions, which was thousands of years old by now. Desmond honestly could not find anything in either Assassin _or_ Templar records that indicated any hint of them knowing that those things had ever actually been real.

Desmond's best guess was that the Minerva and Jupiter (and possibly Juno, if she hadn't gone mad) of this universe had somehow figured out a way to circumvent the next super flare, which, well done, however that had been done. But then they had decided to pack up all their tech and set up all evidence of their existence to just... disappear when they died.

Honestly, he understood. It wasn't like the human race at the time would have been anywhere _near_ ready for that kind of power, as evidenced by how _his_ people had handled it. As in, badly.

But it made the fact that Assassins and Templars not only still existed but were _still fighting_ really strange. It was a different sort of secret global shadow war than the one that had been going on back home, but it was still _there_.

Desmond had honestly thought that without the Isu influence provoking things, that would have died down. He didn't know what to think of being wrong here.

He also had no idea what happened to the native Desmond Miles. It bothered him.

#### RESEARCH RAID ROAD TRIP

190322 FRI 1500

He had marks, but nothing obvious. Nothing golden and shining. His right arm had burn scars, but it was nothing fancy. They were just burns. His palm was a little weird. He wore gloves for that.

Otherwise? The only sign he didn't just go crazy and imagine the whole thing was the fact that he did still actually have his sixth sense Eagle Vision. And it did still work, in the sense that he could find things he otherwise could not possibly have found. And he still had Animus-gained skills he shouldn't have, just as sharp as ever.

Everything else, though, was just... eerily ordinary.

He _did_ check to make sure that the Assassins and Templars were in fact a thing at all, and they were. Just... weirdly tame compared to what Desmond was used to. Every bit of them from the actions to the tools to the members to the very clothes, everything, was just more subdued than they had been in his world.

And yet, somehow, the body count was _even higher_.

He had no clue how that was even possible. He thought _his_ ancestors were blood thirsty. The Assassins and Templars _here_ were just... weird.

They were so restrained and careful right up until they weren't, and then it seemed like it was scorched earth policy on _both_ sides. They seemed really concerned with the whole "no witnesses" thing, and honestly, it bothered him. The only reason he was even able to learn most of what he had was because he'd spied on a lot more of his Shaun and Rebecca's business than they had seemed to be aware of, and thus knew how to get through backdoors into the systems here.

You'd think, being Assassins, Shaun and Rebecca would have been expecting that sort of thing, but they appeared to have really bought into the whole low-expectations dumb jock thing from him. He had kept expecting them to go 'gotcha! we were onto you all along!' but they never had, for some reason. Maybe they were humoring him while rolling their eyes at each other. They had all been really bored _and_ stressed all at the same time, after all. Maybe it was just easier for them to let him spy over their shoulder than to take him to task over it if it kept him quiet and out of their way and let them get their work done.

Either way, he'd picked up a lot of little tricks. Not the actual skill behind the _real_ programming, but rather the sort of script kiddie hacking that Shaun had often left running in the background for the easier and more repetitive tasks so he could concentrate on the important stuff -- that Desmond had managed to pick up. Same with Rebecca; Desmond sure as hell couldn't program an Animus, but he did know the basics of how to keep one going. Which with technology that advanced was actually pretty complicated all by itself.

He had no idea how she had managed to actually build one of the things. It was basically a miracle. There was a _reason_ the two of them had been tapped for the team that was basically responsible for saving the world (though, granted, no one had known just how far that would go). They really were just that good in their chosen fields. Not that great _outside_ of them, but over specialization had to come with some downsides. He had firsthand knowledge of that.

So yeah -- Desmond knew, to a limited degree, how to sneak into both the Templar and Assassin online networks and spy on them from there, not that they actually kept all _that_ much sensitive information available online. But they kept enough to point the way to where he would need to go to _find_ the real sensitive information, if he cared to find out. And by that point, having dug up just enough about the history of this world to start to get really weirded out by the just-off-enough differences, Desmond cared to find out.

So off he went, reluctantly waving goodbye to New York for the while as he went traipsing about on a fool's errand to figure out what the heck was going on with the history of this world. Breaking into secure encampments and depots, learning _way_ more in-depth _actual_ programming than he'd actually wanted to, just so he could get to the real juicy stuff that script-kiddy hacking wouldn't get him. Mostly copying stuff to analyze later.

And, of course, sifting through boxes and boxes and _boxes_ of actual paper files trying to figure things out. Mostly just taking pictures to analyze later. And then finally sitting, alone, in tiny cramped secure places, and analyzing those digital pictures and copies. Staring at little glowing screens for _hours_. And hours. Every day. For a couple months. _Analyzing._ Ugh. So much work.

But he did, eventually, work most of it out. For the most part.

And then he ambled right on back to New York and started serving drinks again while he thought about things.

Because seriously, this was all just weird.

It _looked_ like all the basic building blocks were in the same places. The Isu, the Rebellion, the first Solar Flare, all of that. Minerva, Jupiter, and Juno. The Pieces of Eden. All of that. After all, the _myths_ were still there, so the sources that caused those myths must have been there, too. But then something must have happened, because it was _only_ those myths left. No sign of Juno's influence over events. No remaining Pieces of Eden. All the Temples either closed or dark. No Isu having been heard from or seen interfering for thousands of years.

No Assassin had the Eagle Vision in any written history that he'd been able to find, either. There was no mention of any such thing. There had never been such a thing as a Leap of Faith.

Desmond was kind of getting this creeping weird feeling of dread that maybe the hybridization of human-Isu genetics that he was familiar with just... hadn't lasted here? Or was maybe _never_ a thing? There were all the same people at all the same points in history, but... Maybe they were just... human. Just human, and no Isu genes messing about in there at all. Or at least not anymore, anyway.

That might actually explain... pretty much everything.

Except for the fact that the date was June 15, 2017, and the world had not gone up in a flaming pyre. That was weird. He _had_ checked, and the Grand Temple _was_ there. Closed, and locked, and possibly with a version of Juno still trapped inside, but it was there. But with no one here to activate the Eye...

Well, whatever. Obviously these Isu had figured out _something_ that they had never figured out on his world, so good for them. And managed to avoid dicking around the human race for the past several thousand years while they were at it, so even better, good job.

Didn't leave much for him to do, though. Kind of left him at loose ends, to be honest.

#### HUMAN DIFFERENCES

190322 FRI 1600

In many major historical events in his world, Assassins and Templars were secretly playing a _major_ role in things in the background. It was almost like a private little chess game, but on the world stage. In this world they _occasionally_ got involved in history, but it was generally in minor roles. Certainly not as chess masters. They had their own little private war going on, sure, but it was... a lot more confusing to Desmond than his world's had been.

His world had been pretty clear cut, what with the Templars angling for world domination and profit and the Assassins resisting for the whole life and liberty bit. Really kind of obvious. The Templars represented the corruption of power and the Assassins represented the resistance against that (from the Assassin point of view, anyway). And it was all clarified and magnified by the Isu artifacts they had both used and fought with and over.

The Apples and Staves and Shrouds and Skulls -- the Pieces of Eden didn't allow ambiguity of purpose. The way those things wore at the human mind -- were _designed_ to wear away at the human mind, especially once Juno started inserting herself into the process -- meant that to even survive being in their activated presence a person _had_ to have a certain clarity of purpose and will. The stronger that will, the better one could use the Pieces of Eden. And correspondingly the higher you tended to rise in the ranks of both the Templars and Assassins alike, though neither of them actually admitted that.

That had had effects on both Orders, that clarifying of purpose. The fact that often, no one else _could_ mitigate or soften that purpose, no matter how much damage it wrought. When either Order was bereft of that uncompromising will for whatever reason, they tended to collapse in on themselves, as Desmond himself had seen repeatedly in the Animus, and in real life.

Things weren't so clearcut, here. Here it was just humans fighting humans, no Isu or their artifacts involved anymore, or at least not for thousands and thousands of years as far as Desmond could see. None of them even remembered the Isu who had instigated this fight so long ago. It was a purely human ideological fight to them now, and like all purely human things with no external force to influence a certain order to things -- it got _messy_.

Desmond got that, he did. He understood. That didn't make it any less... distasteful.

On top of that, he was starting to get slowly, gradually... concerned about something else. Maybe even... a little bit paranoid.

Because, as far as he could tell, he _was_ in fact, still very much himself here.

He wasn't, like, possessing the body of the native Desmond Miles. Probably.

The point being that he was quite possibly the only person on the whole damn planet with active Isu genetics. Or any Isu genetics at all.

It took a few months for the possible consequences of that to really percolate through the back of his mind, because he had kind of been actively trying not to think about it.

The fact that he'd had active Eagle Vision since he woke up here was pretty damning, to be honest.

He started doing some pretty deep research into some pretty silly stuff once he couldn't keep blocking out this particular... concern so much anymore.

As far as he could tell, if anyone here, full-human, had tried some of the higher Leaps of Faith he or his ancestors had done over their lives, they would have just plain died. All the math in all the research he could find backed it up. The humans of this world were just more _frail_. All of them. Even what had been considered "pure" humans back home had usually had at least a fraction of a percent of some Isu descent, and that made a difference. And those like Desmond, with particularly high percentages, were downright tanks compared to the average human _here_.

Here, humans died from falling down in the _shower_. Like, that was one of the leading causes of death in the home. One of the _LEADING CAUSES._

How did these people function.

Desmond had tested himself, and his body did perform to _his_ specifications, not the natives', so if he had somehow bodysnatched the local Desmond then his own Isu-genes would have had to come along for the ride in the process.

Seriously, what had happened to the native Desmond Miles. Had he vanished into thin air. Did he pop like a soap bubble. Had he _eaten him?_

Whatever. Okay. So.

Now here he was, in a world made of glass, that nonetheless still had guns that could still kill him pretty dang easily just the same if they hit him in the right place. So he was understandingly increasingly paranoid about being found out as an essentially alien changeling imposter masquerading as a bartender playing hooky from an assassin-cult locked in a millennia-long secret war hiding behind history in the grandest conspiracy of all time.

It was getting to him.

But he was cool.

Even when freaking Shaun Hastings walked into his bar. Goddammit.


	7. renaissance, gift light, ezio merger, 1

#### BACKGROUND

190330 SAT 0854

A magical AU where children around sixteen manifested a Gift. It made them weak for a variable amount of time and vulnerable to the new instincts inherent to their Gift. Dangerous Gifts could result in deaths during this time.

That gave him a year to prepare for the Pazzi Conspiracy.

Maybe the initial warning would be gradual, so they knew to confine Ezio to the house. When it got worse, they knew to put him in his room. He was in bed alone when he exploded, and they ran to find the whole thing incinerated. All anyone outside knew was the boom and flash of light.

But what if the gradual oncome was for weaker Gifts, with less of a 'bump' in the middle. The stronger the Gift the more sudden and severe the oncome, and the more dangerous.

#### MANIFESTATION

190330 SAT 0900

So naturally Ezio gets almost no warning at all. He's in the middle of a fight with Vieri, much less vicious than it would have been a year from now, with only a couple friends backing each up on both sides. It's still at the level of boyish fisticuffs, though far more vicious than average.

Ezio is sweating and flushed, has been for a few minutes. Vieri mocks him for his apparent weakness or perhaps fear, oblivious as always. One of Ezio's friends, Domenico, calls a question in mild concern, something in the back of his head twinging. Ezio carelessly looks back with that same confident unconcerned grin, but his eyes are glazed, and immediately Domenico is _alarmed_ because Ezio wasn't like that _two minutes ago_ and that is _way too fast_.

It could still have been a sudden sickness, or he could have gotten injured maybe. Vieri is convinced it's a ploy to trick him into lowering his guard, and taunts them about cowardly tricks. It could have been something else, right up until Ezio stumbles, sways to a nearby pillar with one arm, and then falls, right there in the road.

Everyone suddenly knows _exactly_ what is happening. The boys, the couple passersby who had been grumbling at them, and even the couple of people in the buildings who had actually been looking out the windows -- they all know, instantly.

The thing is, it's not exactly Polite Society to have a gift of Shadow, is it? Not really socially acceptable. So the Auditore, obviously, could not possibly have such a lowly Gift running in them. They have a much more mild and subtle and reliable and _trustworthy_ Gift of Earth of some brand. No one was quite sure what type, the Auditore weren't the type to show off. Because they couldn't possibly be Shadow. Obviously.

But there would be no hiding if one of them developed right in the middle of Florence in broad daylight. So Vieri gets a "brilliant" idea, breaks so many laws, and does a deeply stupid thing. When Ezio's friends rush forward to grab Ezio's arms to try to lever him up to carry back to the Auditore house, Vieri rushes forward as well and slams one of them back and off again. With a reckless, victorious grin, he waves his fellows over to keep Ezio's friends back. Vieri is determined to stop anyone spiriting Ezio back to the safety and privacy of his family home, forcing his Manifestation right there where anyone could see.

Vieri calls shrill and reckless, high on thoughtless viciousness, for one of his to go get more for witnesses, and for the other to help hold the Auditore friends back. The other of Ezio's friends runs for backup while Domenico keeps trying to get to Ezio, wisely screaming at the top of his lungs at the illegality of Vieri's actions even as Vieri completely ignores him and almost as loudly crows about the soon reveal of the Auditore's shame. He's counting on that to counter any blowback from his own actions, assuming the simple social destruction of the Auditore would be enough to completely obviate his own _completely illegal actions_. Even if Ezio had manifested as Shadow, Vieri would have gotten a nasty surprise.

But he doesn't. It's Domenico who notices it first, exhausted and bloodied and still struggling stubbornly, because fuck Vieri _just that much_.

By now Vieri and his supporters' cries have attracted a crowd, quite a number of them unrelated bystanders who are frankly appalled at the goings-on, but watching anyway because people do that. The struggle to reach Ezio to either move him or keep him there has increased to quite a number as supporters on both sides have poured in.

But it's still-fighting Domenico, with the eye that isn't swollen shut, that first sees the mote of light slowly begin to spark into existence above his friend's still unconscious form.

It takes barely a second more for everyone else to see it.

There was a terrible, silent, breathless pause as everyone in that entire street, whether fighting or gossiping or jockeying for a better look, just stared at that beautiful, terrifying, swirling point of light floating ethereally above Ezio Auditore's fallen form. And growing.

 ** _"RUN!!!"_** Domenico screamed.

As if one panicked organism, every human in line of sight _turned_ and _ran_.

From above it was a remarkable sight. As the fleeing people came into screaming distance of others they _would_ scream, only a handful of words needed for this particular message, and the line of screaming and running would flash forward with no pause for confusion or doubt.

It passed through buildings, too, though much slower than through the streets. Entire establishments vomited out their patrons in a variety of dress, and yet not a single person cared. They just ran.

Despite all this, there was much less disruption to the streets of Florence than you might think.

They just didn't get the chance to run that far.

There was not even one full minute from the spark to full ignition, and then Ezio's Light was _known_.

Thankfully at least the buildings immediately around him had managed to be evacuated.

Considering the sheer number of witnesses that Vieri had so very foolishly drawn to Ezio's Manifesting, there were startlingly few casualties.

The property damage was about what you would expect for a Manifestation left to happen right out in the middle of a city street like that. It could have been worse.

#### WAKING

190330 SAT 1000

Altaïr, Ezio, Haytham, Ratonhnhaké:ton, and Desmond all remembered dying. Desmond is the only life that is _fully_ remembered from start to finish with no gaps, no hazy missing memories, and some of their lives are more missing than remembered, but all five of them nonetheless feel... present. There are flashes of other lives, other memories, but none that... feel like _them_.

There is no Bleeding Effect, though. He... just feels like he's lived five lifetimes, and then forgotten most of it.

He should probably choose a name.

It definitely won't be Haytham. He can feel his mouth smiling without permission at his own joke. That's good. He can laugh at himself. That's good to know.

He cracks his eyes, painfully, very tired, to see a very Renaissance Italy room in early morning light. That... is very interesting. Very interesting.

Would he be Ezio, here? Or is this some other body? He pokes his tongue at his lip -- no scar. Hm. No beard either, though. Might just be too young. But also might not be Ezio. Might be Giovanni for all he knew. That would be weird, being his own father.

Blinking at the ceiling, he drew in a breath and braced himself against the bed, _dragging_ himself to the edge with a great deal more effort than he cared for. Lord but this body was run down. He must have been very sick indeed -- rarely had he experienced this level of weakness in any of his lives, and only after the worst sort of injuries where he had lost a _great_ deal of blood. He just rested prone at the edge of the bed for a while, gazing about the room, looking for something reflective or otherwise able to help inform him as to the time period.

When he felt up to it, he tried easing into his Sight, and then promptly threw himself right back out of it again at the spike of pain that felt like it damn near tore his right eye out. After panting his way through that, he resigned himself to the slow way of investigating, and tried to sit up.

A minute later he tried again, and kept trying until he actually succeeded.

From a more upright position he was able to get a bit better perspective, and this room was... vaguely familiar. Not enough to actually recognize, though.

Eventually he finds a bit of silver -- a cheese knife or goblet or brush or something I dunno, and recognizes his face. Names himself Ezio and sticks with it.

Might lay back down to sleep the rest of the day away, wake up the next morning to stare out the window. Might just crawl to the window right then, restless to see the rest of Florence unsullied by the memories of his family's loss. Can't quite bear more than that right now, either way.

Whether right then or the next morning, the maid opens the door and gasps, dropping whatever she was carrying, hopefully just linens, when she sees sixteen year old Ezio sitting curled on the windowsill after having Manifested his... so very unexpected and _taxing_ and _dangerous_ Gift. Just sitting at the window, calm as you please, like nothing happened. That _boy_. So she spins and goes running and Ezio notes that, but carefully does not react. Best to wait, see what is going on here.

Also, he is so tired as he can hardly believe. He lets himself continue to bask, eyes closed, in the sunlight of the window. It's very pleasant. Especially considering he last remembered the sun burning him to death.

(He's mostly Desmond, he knows that, then Ezio, then Ratonhnhaké:ton, then Altaïr, then Haytham, in descending order of actual memories -- but _all_ of them were dead, and _this_ Ezio, this boy they were now, _he_ was alive -- and so _Ezio_ they were and that was that. If they were going to steal the boy's life they could at least respect his name, and not one of them disagreed.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rewriting these things to make them moderately presentable for posting is exhausting.


	8. Grey Island, 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An alternate version of how this idea might go.

Desmond wakes up in the Grey, the same as everyone does when they die. Unlike everyone, though, in instinctive self-defense he immediately blinks himself into a personal mock-Animus Island.

Clay had made sure the basic Island blueprint was etched into Desmond even as he was being deleted, just in case. Can't have the savior drop into another coma, with no hope of recovery without an A.I. to the rescue, right?

That blueprint was what Desmond instinctively grabbed now, without even realizing what he'd done. But this isn't a computer program anymore. The Grey responds to his subconscious expectations of reality, which affects his personal manifestation of the Island. It comes out smoother, more realistic in some ways -- and stranger, more dream-like and _less_ realistic in others. More how his subconscious wants it to be. Whether or not his conscious mind will be able to make sense of some of those alterations will be a different thing.

_If_ Desmond is still able to open windows to the world at all, here he can only open them in the past. Desmond has no way of knowing what's going on in the world past his death. He's completely unable to open any windows to the world after the time of his death. It is... unnerving, and he tries not to think about it too hard. There are just too many possible explanations for the blank barrier to his perception. Maybe it was Juno blocking him, maybe he just didn't have the kind of energy that kind of thing took for some reason, who knew. Maybe he was just too new at this, and he would figure it out with time. He tried to keep himself distracted from obsessing over it.

Following his bloodline was easy only because he was cheating. The Animus already showed him the way. Otherwise that would _also_ be too exhausting, but maybe he doesn't know that? Maybe he shouldn't be able to go in _either_ direction. He should be stuck in the Grey, and dissolve away like everybody else. But the Animus cheated for him, the Isu artifacts cheated for him. One gave him the power, the other gave him the instructions. The Isu blood gave him the ability in the first place?

But this isn't actually the Animus, so I don't think... actually why couldn't he relive his ancestor's memories? No DNA, sure, but it's the Grey, everything is there. He probably could, if he expected to.

He doesn't have that much control of the Dreaming. No three dimensional Rooms under his command. Again, _if_ he can open windows to spy the past or relive his ancestors memories, then none of that would have anything to do with _this_ Dreaming.

Here, the dreaming Ancestors wander in to his Island out of the mists on their own more than anything else; Desmond certainly doesn't do anything to lure them in. Desmond doesn't think of the side effects of talking to them because he's not the one calling them there. And he doesn't really have the same power and control that the first idea had so how would he even check.

They come when they need someone to hear, and Desmond will listen. This is his Island, and provides the setting and accoutrements, but it happens with less conscious effort on his part, in the way of dreams. Desmond's subconscious is doing the work, he doesn't know how to work the damn thing.

Desmond is all about not being in control. And doing the right thing anyway, as best as you can. Which isn't necessarily the best. But it's the best you can.

I honestly don't know what he does when the silvery Ancestors don't ghost-Dream visit him for talks, if he _can't_ open past-world windows or relive ancestral memories. Just wander around, or sit. Either way he _feels_ himself extend out and _feels_ the Grey and the Chaos of it. And how he _sits_ there in his little Island, all solid and Real somehow, and being there. And feeling out the edges of himself, and noticing how the edges are getting ragged, unraveling, and the tendrils, the threads of that unraveling, are threading out through the Chaos of the Grey. Threading out and _through_ and _growing_ , and the weave of the ragged edge of himself is ever-so-slowly growing ever-so-slightly _larger_?

And that as he grows _larger_ , he just... knows... a little bit more than he... should?

When they die, those Ancestors end up on his Island. They show up all at once, because what is time anyway. It wasn't like they had visited him in anything like a linear fashion in the first place.

They didn't remember him when they woke in real life, but every time they came to him in a Dream, they remembered all previous Dreams. When they woke one final time upon his Island, they remembered it all once again.

They remembered how he comforted them. How he had been this ethereal, otherworldly being, with them all their lives, comforting and guiding them from their dreams. They didn't remember him while awake, no, but he _had_ guided them nonetheless, because some part of them had remembered what he had taught them while they had been with him.

They had been grey-silver ghost-like to Desmond while Dreaming with him, but he had been a pale-gold translucent spirit to them. When they die, they finally appear to each other in solid color. For once the Island was not wreathed in light grey mist and muted as dreams are, but bright, clear, and everything easy to see.

In this way, there is no damn way to know just how many Ancestors Desmond spoke to. How many popped up on the Island. But I'm thinking only maybe... I dunno. Six or so, maybe, connected solidly enough to him to show up there when they died.

They would pop up only when something happens to change the status of Desmond's Island. Something changes in the Grey. Something happens. Something is _going_ to change. Desmond... is going somewhere? Something? Another universe perhaps.

And he's taking his Ancestors with him.

Or perhaps he's being sent.

Who knows if he ever works out if he actually affected the timeline, or whether these were all just ghosts pulled from his mind and blood. There really is no way to know for sure.

...Except it would be _so cruel_ to take them away from their loved ones, real or not. Even if they do just fade away into the grey, they would probably prefer that to eternity without their families. They _yearn_ for their lovers and children and parents. Desmond can't keep them from them just for his sake. It would be cruel. It would hurt them.

People seek oblivion for less.

So, no, though Desmond may comfort the ghosts of his ancestors, he would not _deliberately_ bring their post-death selves along with him. Not without dulling all their living connections first... And that seems like a very not-Desmond thing to do. A Juno thing to do, maybe.

So perhaps a twisted gift from her? Outright clones with their memories?

-

In the end the point with this particular idea, though, was mostly the Ancestors' point of view.

As they die, they appear on the Island, and they _remember_ all the past interactions they had there with the spirit of the Island. But then all these other random people show up. And the Island looks different, color and light where it was dim and gray mist before. And there, looking away from them, leaning against a rock, there is the glowing golden figure that had given them such succor in their dreams throughout their lives, though they may have never quite remembered when they woke up. Desmond.

He is color, flesh and blood, just like them, now.

That's the point. That moment of realization. _That_ is this fic. The moral implications are not the _point_. The ancestors are the ones driving the story here. Desmond is just the guide.

And to the reader, he is the cheat sheet so we can enjoy things, because we get the backstage view.

So tell their story. It's their adventure, their reincarnation story, not his. _He_ is not taking them anywhere, as far as they know, _they_ are taking _him_. He is just their guide. The fact that he _is_ so very passive, so very willing to let them drive the story, encourages that view. He's a larger than life figure for them, and it's easy to put that sort of figure in the background when it doesn't do anything. So this is their story.

We, as the readers, get the cheat sheet by knowing better through Desmond's eyes, and that makes everything better and more fun for me I think. But for them, it's a no spoiler show.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Except then, of course, I just had no idea of where to take this any further at all. Lots of potential, good start... going absolutely nowhere. Completely dead. Very sad.
> 
> Most of my fics are like this. Ideas, nothing more. I've more or less made my peace with this.


	9. renaissance, father ezio, fretting over desmond

Ezio looked down from where he settled so carefully to sit beside his son, the child sleeping deep and oblivious as children do, sprawled out on the bed. He clenched and stretched his hand, trying to resist the near overpowering urge to place his hand on that bare chest and belly and just feel the life and breath and heartbeat of his son within. How this was possible, he did not know. It made it all the more vital to him that it had happened anyway, and the boy was right here, alive and well and _present_. He was alive. That was the most important part. He very nearly hadn't been, if they had been just a fraction slower.

Ezio couldn't resist any longer, and with as much care as he could, reached out to trace a featherlight touch over the boy's cheek. Even so, within a few breaths the child's brows wrinkled and he inhaled as he turned his head inquisitively to the touch. Ezio yanked his hand back with a grimace. Not so oblivious after all, then. He hadn't meant to wake the boy.

Gradually, with no further intrusion, his son settled back down and his face smoothed once again into full sleep. He hadn't truly woken, nor opened his eyes, no thanks to Ezio's impatience. The healer had been quite clear in her instructions, and would have his hide should she find out. Ezio sighed, stretching out his hand again. He wanted to meet his son _now_. With no other option, he balled his fists on his thighs and merely traced his eyes along his son's form, taking in whatever information he could while he waited.

The boy could have been anywhere from six to eight, depending on how well-fed he had been during his life. Ezio was well aware of how stunting starvation could be for a child, and he hoped his child hadn't suffered that. He didn't appear to be starving _now_ , even if that wasn't a guarantee that he hadn't in the past. He wasn't the plump of an over-fed pampered child, but neither was he the stick-thin of most barely-surviving peasants. He appeared well-formed, perhaps a _bit_ thin for Ezio's tastes, but nothing dangerous. He had a few scars, as children often did, and again, perhaps even those few were too many for Ezio's tastes, but they were nothing out of the ordinary. The boy didn't appear to have significant whip or belt scarring on his back or anywhere else, thankfully. By his callouses and musculature he had lived an active life, which the scars supported as one didn't get those sorts by sitting in a room. He was surprisingly clean. But he had been naked, wounded, dazed and near unconscious, and had they not interfered, Ezio had no doubt he would not have survived.

Whatever life he had lived before, something had obviously gone terribly wrong. Again Ezio had to stretch and clench his fists to keep himself from reaching out. He daren't even cover him back up with the blanket the child must have shoved down to his waist in his sleep, with how sensitive to touch he apparently was. He must be cold. There wasn't even a fireplace or brazier in this room. Why bother putting a bed in here when there wasn't _fire_?

Ezio shook his head, and blew out a controlled, silent breath. At least for now, the boy seemed comfortable enough. Perhaps he ran hot. Ezio's brows quirked with concern. Or perhaps he was running a fever. He eyed the child's skin, trying to see if he appeared more flushed or damp than he should be. He _seemed_ fine, given his injuries... If only the healer hadn't had to leave for her other patients. Sure, she would be coming back, but that wouldn't be till tomorrow unless the boy took a sudden turn for the worse. Ezio rubbed his fingertips together and flicked his eyes around the walls a bit anxiously.

It went on like this for the next three hours. Ezio hovering next to the child, barely holding himself back even as he worked himself up and then talked himself down again, over and over again. Who knows if it would have continued on into the whole night, if the pattern hadn't been interrupted.

-

The sound of boots and voices raised in worry, and Ezio's eyes were locked on the door, focused and gleaming in that particular way of his that so unnerved newcomers. His face was set and calm now as he scanned to the right, seeing something other than the blank wall. He pursed his lips, and glanced down at his son.

And then promptly winced and shook his head as he rubbed at his eyes. That was the third time, you would think he'd have learned not to do that by now... Blinking open his slightly watering eyes, he brusquely swept the covers up and around his sleeping son's form and then carefully hefted him up to half-drape over one shoulder so that one of his arms would remain free. The boy's face had already begun to scrunch, confused at first, then into an adorable moue of a pout, which Ezio forced himself to ignore even as he eased the boy into position.

Ezio then leant up against the wall next to the door and reached out to undo the secure latch, easing the door open quietly as he focused his vision to the task. He forced himself to ignore the bright form draped over his shoulder even as he could feel eyelashes fluttering against his neck. Ezio grimaced. There was never any way to avoid waking the boy, the healer would just have to accept that, given the circumstances. Hopefully. Healers could be strange.

His son let out a confused little sound, still half-asleep from the sound of it, and Ezio shushed him as soothingly and _quietly_ as he could. He stroked his back with his free hand as he rushed down the too-empty hallways as fast as he dared. All the rooms were just as empty, signs of hasty and ill-prepared departure in all of them. No one had been ready for this. Ezio flicked his eyes up to the ceiling as his son gave a little cough, noting that the smoky haze was getting thicker more quickly than he had hoped. He crouched a little more as he darted along. His son was awake enough now, finally, to pull his arms up around Ezio's neck and hold on to his shoulders, increasing their stability, to Ezio's relief.

This whole time the sound of shouting and the pounding of armed men rushing to and fro was a constant background. Often Ezio would skid to a stop, bracing himself against a wall with his arm, and then dart in another direction, guided by something only he could see. He would not risk his son, not after how they had found him.

By now the boy was clinging on to him with both arms and legs as best he could, obviously trying not to make a burden of himself. He never made a noise when Ezio had to slam to a stop, even when that had to jar his still-healing wounds. He tensed, his breath catching in obvious pain, but he never made a sound. That didn't actually reassure Ezio. The boy was too young to know such discipline. Where and from whom had he learned it? And were they still living for Ezio to... speak to?

Ezio tried not to let these thoughts distract him, but lord was it harder than expected. No one told him being a father would be this hard. He was exhausted after just one night.

When they finally made it to the kitchens, the place was a mess with signs of battle all over the place. Ezio tried to walk at such an angle that his son didn't see the worst of the blood splashed on the cabinets, but he could feel his son staring all the same.

Ezio crept to the secondary entrance, a tiny sliver of a door that still showed safe to his examination. He still paused to crack it open and glance outside before slipping through, shutting it silently behind him and ghosting off into the shadows.

This was just as risky, in its way. They could be seen by anybody, now, and he wasn't sure where would be safe to go. It had been obvious that his brethren had worked their hardest to keep the fighting away from his son's room, giving him the time to get the two of them away.

It burned at Ezio to just leave the fighting like that, but he had precious cargo to secure first. They had clearly understood that, given their actions, but it still bothered him.


	10. renaissance, abo, vatican gone, 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter exists solely because of the comments in the first part of this particular fic idea (Chapter 5). Much of this is lifted directly from my own responses there. (If you aren't reading the comments, you are missing half the story sometimes, it seems. Which I never would have imagined possible, with my anxiety issues, but I guess the new medication hasn't left the honeymoon phase yet. Fingers crossed.)

200101 WED 2010

There was a section of the general populace of Rome who weren't particularly well-informed of the underground war going on not-very-secretly in their streets. One might even say they were the majority. When confronted with the complete annihilation of the Vatican, they had a slightly different reaction than those who _did_ know about the Templars.

What the average citizen did know was that the Borgia-led Church had been running Rome into the ground. The somewhat more informed were aware of just how ground down the Papal States in general were becoming due to Cesare Borgia's seemingly endless ambition for conquest.

It was not hard to project that they had finally pissed off someone too powerful for even them to dismiss, and paid _horribly_ for their folly. To even the humblest, simplest peasant, looking out over that lake of ash with the single, small stone Temple standing ominously silent in the center, the general gist of things seemed quite clear.

They didn't know what god that Temple belonged to, but judging by the no-longer-glowing unfamiliar markings etched on the walls, and the fact that it had obliterated the Holy See, it certainly wasn't the Christian God.

200101 WED 2030

Most of the people of Rome, aware and resenting of the Borgia as they had been, had at least been aware to _some_ degree or another of the Assassins fighting back against them, even if only in rumors here and there.

Many (who weren't allied with, serving, or profiting off of the Borgia regime themselves) who were frightened at the thought of such violent murderers rampaging about their streets, still nonetheless had quiet moments of schadenfreude at the thought of those murderers being pointed at the _Borgia_.

The Assassins spent months working diligently in Rome, forging their networks. They made allies and friends and investments, putting both time and effort and capital into building up the community that the Borgia had been wearing thin, just as much as they fought against their enemies directly with blade and fist and blood. It made an impact. It shifted perceptions.

And then the Vatican was vaporized, and the Assassins were seen immediately racing across the pale ash to the still-glowing Temple. They stayed for well over an hour inside, and when they left they _took_ something, and the Temple stopped glowing shortly thereafter. Many weren't quite sure what to think of that, still too stunned by the horror of it all in the first place.

The obvious answer as to what the Assassins took from the Temple was the glowing Papal Staff that had been floating with some shining strange orb on top, which an Assassin had been seen picking up. But rumors were rife of what else might have gone on for that hour they were in that Temple. What had they seen. Who had they spoken to. What _else_ might they have come away with.

No one else was brave enough to actually check the Temple for almost five hours after, though, and even then it was a madwoman, rambling constantly to herself as she shuffled out into the ash. After her came others, in ones and twos at first, tentative and fearful, but eventually in a steady flow.

The Temple remained cold and empty, though. Whatever the Assassins had found inside, whatever they had learned, it was not there now.

200101 WED 2045

They were terrified of the ash, of course. Most people were positive it was cursed. An enterprising man, sensing an opportunity, dragged a brother-in-law with access to lumber into building a lane of wood planks from one edge of the ash lake to the black stone Temple, and it was fairly soon after clogged with people willing to pay his toll to avoid crossing the ash themselves. Other walkways quickly sprung up by rival opportunists, some better built than others.

But a proper road was never built, nor did the talk of a wider, more sturdy walking path ever go anywhere. There just wasn't any need.

For all that there was a constant stream of people seeking the truth of the Temple for themselves, even if only to see it close up with their own eyes, it was never a particularly heavy stream, nor was the flow strong. There just weren't _that_ many people brave enough to dare the lake of ash.

It wasn't even so much that they thought it was cursed anymore, though some still clung to that. It was more that most people just didn't think it smart to go poking at whatever deity the Church had obviously enraged.

Since the Temple had stopped glowing shortly after the Assassins had left, and no further smiting had occurred, it had become widely accepted that the Assassins must have assuaged that Being somehow.

Some people even whispered that this was why the Assassins had been fighting against the Borgia all along. That they had known, somehow, that the Borgia were meddling in things they should not touch, and inviting disaster. Most others shushed them when those people started up those whispers again and took away their cups for the night. Some rumors were just taking things too far.

200101 WED 2102

Whatever it was that the Assassins had taken from the Temple that day -- and there was _mighty_ curiosity -- the general populace just never found out. Not for lack of trying. But even as the numbers of Assassins seemed to swell greater than ever before, they closed ranks with a united spirit of grim purpose.

200101 WED 2105

To those who were _not_ an average citizen, and actually were connected to the Assassins and their war against the Templars, there was so very much more going on under the surface.

Maintaining a calm facade for the populace became practically half the job after Ezio Auditore himself had to reprimand a few of the more hotheaded new recruits who hadn't taken the warnings of other Assassin trainers to heart.

If anyone had the rage of the sun in his breast for the Templars, it was Ezio Auditore, and he could let it out at the drop of a hat and _floor_ an entire room with the scent, his hatred for them was so great. So when _he_ lectured you on self-restraint and a time and place for such things, it stuck. He could and did rant and rage with the best of them, but only where it would not compromise the Brotherhood.

Everyone who had met or heard about his family knew why he felt such rage, of course. Especially considering his son.

Not everyone was clear on just what exactly had _happened_ to his son, and the rumors were wildly different depending on who you listened to, but everyone agreed it was all bad.

200101 WED 2135

The Church was, without the slightest doubt, in for a _very_ bad time. They still had the army and infrastructure and manpower, but all of it was spread out across their land, and their head had been well and truly cut off. What was worse, it had been done in such a way as to raise _questions_. Questions the remaining authorities, when they finally got their act together and figured out what on Earth had happened, would be completely unable to satisfy.

To the surprise of no one who knew anything about affairs of state, the individual Papal States would fairly quickly show signs of agitating for independence. Again. Under the current state of emergency, Rome would take far too long to muster its response.

This would be getting messy.

200104 SAT 1705

Desmond had passed out pretty much as soon as Minerva and Jupiter's editions were done with him, exhausted and agonized by the process. He woke up almost two days later, and would take days more to be able to do more than hobble around slowly. At Ezio's order the Assassins kept a polite distance from the boy unless they were invited or required otherwise. That did not stop a wild and vivacious rumor circuit from popping up, it merely kept them from asking the boy anything directly.

191219 THU 0710

He was so very confused by Ezio's completely confident insistence that he was the man's son, because unlike Ezio he couldn't properly smell them, and didn't understand the import scent had in this society. He kept insisting that he _wasn't_ Ezio's son, although he couldn't deny that they were at least related when Claudia shifted the argument to that angle. It both broke Ezio's heart because of what it implied and fueled his rage ever higher.

Every time Desmond showed how isolated and lied to he must have been for his whole life, to not recognize such basic daily things as how to interpret an alpha's _growl_ , of all things... Not even mentioning the endless wealth of everything else he didn't understand.

Ezio was very, very angry. The Church was having a _very_ bad time.

200104 SAT 1717

Ezio didn't learn all these heartbreaking things about his son immediately. They came slowly, one horrible revelation at a time, as the boy recovered from his ordeal.

Some of them came more quickly on the heels of the next than he would prefer.

One such harrowing evening, very soon after the boy had woken, he had joined his son outside in the small inner garden to enjoy the peace of watching the sky with him. Desmond often seemed to enjoy basking underneath the open sky. Ezio tried not to let his mind run away too much with what that might mean.

He had meant to, hoped to, simply connect with his son in silence if nothing else. The boy was so difficult to connect with, to understand. But once he had settled himself on the bench beside him, he quickly grew to feel awkward sitting there in full armor next to his still-recovering son dressed in simple linen. For some reason he was acutely aware that he hadn't bathed in... what was it, eight days now? Hardly unusual, and yet next to his son who he knew bathed nearly every chance he got, he suddenly felt quite grimy.

Shifting where he sat and clearing his throat, he sought out a harmless topic to open some light talking. He commented on the state of the garden's plants, and Desmond nodded and murmured in agreement. He wondered aloud of possible future weather, all the while wincing internally, and Desmond shrugged with a mild smile and said, "Who knows." A little desperately, he asked after how Desmond had found the kitchen, since the boy had seemed interested in investigating that and Ezio had given his blessing before his last soirée out against the Templars. Desmond winced deeply and looked away with a grimace as he rubbed his neck, not saying a word.

This was going horribly. Ezio could practically smell the boy's discomfort and awkwardness, it was awful, Ezio was mortified.

It was as his eye caught on the scar on Desmond's lip, again, that the question just slipped out of Ezio's mouth without his permission. Even as he heard himself say it, he felt like turning and slamming his head into the wall behind them.

Of course he would do this on his first real attempt at conversing with the boy, _of course_ he would, why had he thought otherwise. The scar had been _snagging_ his attention every time his eyes caught on it, but that was no excuse. He could already assume it was almost certainly the Templars just... being Templars, and none of the awful scenarios he had come up with to explain the mocking tribute of it were at _all_ suitable for a relaxing introductory conversation. Ezio you _idiot_.

And yet... for once, Desmond actually answered him, with no real indication of distress. He first gave another small shrug -- and where exactly had he learned that low-born French behavior? Then, still looking away and idly rubbing his neck, with perhaps a slight embarrassed twist of his mouth, Desmond calmly, casually said that it had been a sparring accident with his father.

A sparring accident. With his **father**.

Ezio's mind went blank with the sound of a storm wind drowning out any thought that might have tried to form. He just stared at Desmond for several seconds, very still, until Desmond finally realized something was wrong and turned his head to look at him.

The change of expression on the boy's face was dramatic, and yet Ezio could not find it in himself to react as Desmond's curious, confused look dropped to clear alarm and he actually jerked back on the bench. Desmond froze in place staring at Ezio with wide eyes, his mouth slightly open in shock, his hand hovering in the air nearby.

They stayed that way for Ezio didn't know how long. A minute or so, maybe. He couldn't tell. Desmond, over that time, grew more and more concerned, worry clear in his eyes.

And yet no fear. Ezio had no idea what he looked like, or smelled like, but though Desmond looked worried and smelled anxious, he was not _afraid_.

The Assassins that had shown up halfway through Ezio's period of blank shock, rushing up and then slamming to a halt just outside the boundaries of the garden -- they smelled afraid. Probably worried as well, yes, but what Ezio could actually smell was fear. He should probably care more about that.

All he cared about was the way Desmond worried his lip between his teeth, a clearly unconscious habit of long practice, so old that he no longer noticed himself doing it anymore. Otherwise he probably wouldn't have been biting at the very scar that had precipitated this whole thing.

He said that his **father** had given him that.

Well, they had already thought that some secret sect of Templars probably had a hand in raising him, after all. That was just based on how obviously deprived he was. Adding this... It made sense.

Ezio's hand clawed against the bench next to his thigh. The Assassins outside the garden began to get more agitated.

Desmond had obviously overcome incredible odds to have come as far as he had under the Templar yoke, but there were bound to be some consequences that couldn't be avoided. Whatever the Templars had done to render Desmond unable to recognize the scent of his own family when it was sitting right in front of him...

Ezio breathed in and out harshly around the heavy obstruction weighing down his chest. Desmond looked more concerned at him, his brows wrinkling, and the growing crowd of Assassins outside got louder.

Ezio blinked slowly and heavily at the hand Desmond had hovering halfway between them, looking as if he wanted nothing so much as to grasp Ezio's shoulder but uncertain if he could. Such an earnest boy. Of course the Templars had blinded his sense of smell. Of course they had. It all made sense. How else were they going to have the boy put in front of him, for whatever purpose they had eventually intended, without Desmond realizing what they had done? What Ezio and Desmond truly were to each other?

Ezio opened his mouth just a crack, then closed it. Opened it again, and wheezed, very faintly, "I'm your father, Desmond."

Ezio's fists were so tightly clenched that if he weren't still wearing his gloves, having not bothered to undress or disarm at all after coming in today from his last mission, then he would have long drawn blood. He watched Desmond's face, eyes locked and unable to look away, as his son took in his words.

At first there was a brief moment of confusion as the words hadn't quite settled, and then shock drained Desmond's expression as his face went slack and his eyes went wide and blank. He just stared at Ezio, his mouth parted the slightest bit.

Ezio could feel that leaden, heavy thing in his chest start to burn as he tried to breath around it. It sunk down toward his belly, hot, pulling everything else down toward its weight with tangling ropes. The commotion outside the garden was growing quiet, as if he wouldn't hear them there if they tried hard enough.

Desmond blinked, abruptly frowning as his mouth clicked shut. He still wasn't quite looking at Ezio, or anything else there at the moment, still looking a bit unfocused, but his scent was shaking off its shock. He slowly shook his head while looking at nothing.

Then his eyes suddenly snapped back into focus and pinned into Ezio's, serious and intent and sad. "I'm not your son, Ezio," he said softly, as if trying to break the news gently to him.

Ezio stared at him, experiencing another moment of blankness, as his mind tried to comprehend that his son was utterly, completely serious. He truly believed every word he had just said.

When the hard, heavy fire in his belly roared back and burned everything else from his mind it was a molten white that would allow nothing else but _retribution_ and it had to be satisfied _now_.

Ezio rose from the bench without saying a word and left his sad-eyed son sitting there as he walked away from the garden. The absolutely silent Assassins hiding outside could not hide from him. He would require eyes and direction for this, as he had no intention on wasting time digging for information.

They would provide, and he would slake his blade on the blood of his enemies until this molten rage was quenched enough for other thoughts.

That wouldn't be for almost a week, but it would eventually happen. At which point the Assassins still running ragged in the field trying to keep up with him would drag back the passed out form of Ezio Auditore completely coated in blood and viscera.

His son was quietly frantic with worry the whole time.


	11. renaissance, gift light, ezio merger, 2

#### FAMILY

191119 TUE 1600

Ezio was still sat on the windowsill, unmoving, when judging by the rush of footsteps, it seemed the whole family came running up. They all halted at the still-open door, however, and it was Maria alone that delicately stepped around the dropped linens into Ezio's room. Then as she cautiously approached where her son sat, despite the danger, Giovanni stepped even more carefully in after her. He knew better, he knew his son was a Light, and as a Shadow himself... but it was his son. He did it anyway.

Because Ezio was sitting in the _open window_. He had only _just_ awoken. It would take so little for him to fall. They are terrified for him, as much as they are frightened of the risk of bringing a Shadow so near to a Light.

But at the same time... some part of them can't quite believe. Not yet. Not until they see. He's their _son_. The sheer heartbreak if he reacts as a true Light... so yes, they may be in some denial here.

Maria is halfway to him before she softly calls his name, and Ezio finally turns his head to look at them, slow and languid. The sunlight he had been basking in clings to his eyes, tracing a visible trail of Light as he turns his head. His eyes retain a mesmerizing complex shine for a moment before the glow dissipates, leaving his normal warm brown eyes behind. But they all saw it.

His expression was different, somehow. Placid and pleasant, gentle and languid with obvious exhaustion, he met Maria's eyes with no fear or hesitation or confusion, but also not much recognition. He did not smile at her like he usually did, did not greet her.

Then his gaze shifted almost absently to the side toward Giovanni, and his entire demeanor shifted.

191119 TUE 1615

Oh? Ezio thought, seeing Giovanni. What's this?

He hadn't been much aware of the new energy bathing and swirling around him in this new life yet, because everything else was still too raw, too new, too chaotic.

He was still relishing the ability to breath relatively fresh air under an open sky, basking with enjoyment in the unobscured sunlight. He had idly been trying to catalog the scents of Florence, refamiliarizing himself with his environment, when his family had coming rushing in.

Seeing Mother's dear face, alive and bright with awareness, unburdened by torrential loss, was a great comfort. He felt a pleasant fondness and deep love as he looked at her worried face.

Then he saw Father, and that... that was interesting.

There was something... _different_ about him. An energy about and within him, a fascinating darkness that echoed on the fabric of reality that _called_ to Ezio.

He had to know what that was.

191119 TUE 1623

All that his family saw, though, was the previously pleasant, calm expression on Ezio's tired face sharpening suddenly into an intent focus aimed at his father and ignoring everything else. They saw his eyes _flare_ with Light, bright and terrible, as his body, once languid with tiredness, now tensed with intent. He put one hand down to shift off the window, pushing off to stand and stalk toward his father, every movement strangely smooth -- right up until he stumbled and fell to the floor.

Because he _had_ just woken up, and he did not have the strength for this. Hence why now had been the time to test him, to show him and tempt him -- because only right then would it possibly be safe. And even then, for that brief moment, they had still been frozen with terror.

191119 TUE 1630

Maria rushed forward to her fallen son, even as Giovanni backed to the open door. He took hold of Federico's upper arm as he pulled further into the hallway.

All their hearts were crushed as Ezio's face had changed on sight of his father. But there was nothing to be done. All there was now, was limiting the damage.

The rest of the family, those not Shadows, pushed into the room, though they still hovered somewhat uncertainly. Maria began giving orders from her position on the floor where she cradled her son's head to her bosom as she tried to stay strong in her grief. He blinked at her calm again now, only seeming a bit confused in his dazed state. He allowed her fussing without complaint. He was so obviously exhausted, she did not know how he had even gotten to the window in the first place.

Later, as they kept finding him there, they would surmise that he needed the light for some reason, or perhaps the access to the open. The times they did bar shut the window or arranged the beds to keep him from reaching it, he looked so forlorn. Laid out so he could reach as close as he could, looking through the closed glass at the sky -- they didn't have the heart to do it again. They stopped trying to pull him away so much, instead focusing on making it safer for him.

He bemusedly allowed all of this. Really, he just had several lifetimes' worth of preference for hanging about in high places. He wasn't going to be stopping now.

191119 TUE 1643

Naturally, he kept trying to track down Giovanni or Federico so he can figure out that _fascinating_ energy they had about them. And they kept avoiding him.


	12. post-death, no-isu, effectively alien, 2

#### ASSASSIN IN HIS BAR

190322 FRI 1640

Okay, play it cool, whatever, he was fine. Shaun just meandered in, casual as you please, his body language saying he had done this before. Not this specific establishment, but he had done this to _Desmond_ before. So they had made contact at some point, okay, that made sense, no problem.

When had they made contact. When had this happened. Dammit. Desmond had found no record of this.

Shaun was meandering his way to the bar now. Desmond kept his own body language to the same oblivious, friendly bartender, not even looking at him, just doing his job.

When Shaun eventually did make it to the bar, Desmond waited exactly the amount of time he would have if he'd had no idea the guy was an Assassin, and only had the guy's body language to go on. That was to say, Shaun knew him, but only as a casual acquaintance; maybe they'd met once or twice before and had a conversation or two. So that was the tack that Desmond took in return.

Desmond smiled and said, "Hey," with a tone of recognition, but no real depth. Casual, calm.

Shaun gave that same tight smile that passed for casual for him, his body language speaking... hm, like an overworked intellectual. Stressed, tired, casual, looking for something to take his mind away from work. Underneath that, of course, was the much tighter layer of tension that a civilian was definitely not supposed to see, so Desmond politely pretended not to see it.

"So what're you thinking this time, hm?" Desmond asked, angling his body to indicate the bottles arrayed behind him, but tilting his head toward the beer taps off to the side as he raised his brows. He laid his hands flat on the counter in very clear subliminal non-threat open posture, relaxed and welcoming.

Shaun's smile twitched a bit more wry as he leaned on the counter, "After the swill you foisted on me last time I'm not looking to trust in your so-called 'skills' in this matter, frankly--" and Desmond couldn't help but break into quiet laughter as Shaun continued his quiet rant, absolutely quintessential Shaun, his voice so perfectly hilarious as it squawked and croaked. Shaun ended on a mockingly dismissive note, imperiously pointing to the tap of his choice -- because of course he had already done his research and knew exactly what he wanted to drink -- and Desmond allowed just a hint of his fondness to stain his amused grin as he pushed off the bar to grab a glass for his order.

So, going by that little song and dance there, the _Assassins_ hadn't made contact with Desmond Miles, exactly. They were just covertly keeping an eye on him. He wondered if they had been doing that back home, too, or had he been Templar-napped before they had a chance to catch up to him. Would they have even bothered with covert surveillance? Or just barged in and confronted him -- that seemed more like his world's style anyway.

This world did like its cloak and dagger.

He spent the next few hours circling back to Shaun every now and then as his duties permitted, never showing too much interest, but keeping the lines of communication open. Letting Shaun set the pace. Seeing where the lines of this thing seemed to be drawn. Shaun was only a faint, messy gold under his Sight, which really wasn't helpful right then.

Most people in this world were a bit of a mess when it came to his Sight's color interpretations, unless in clear high-risk situations that usually had to involve life or death. Sometimes not even then. Back home things had been simpler, easier. Most people had never really showed up to his Sight in color at all, just faded into the background. Only the ones that actually impacted the mission had lit up in one way or another, and that had suited Desmond just fine. Not here, though, and wasn't that _inconvenient_.

He blamed the lack of Isu genes. Whatever psychic ridiculousness the Sixth Sense really was, it clearly relied on **everyone** having at least some tiny, infinitesimal drop of Isu genetics to get everything working properly together. Now that he was the only one, nobody else was cooperating. Maybe when the Isu created humanity they just did it differently. Maybe in his world they stirred in just a bit of themselves to speed up the process, and in this world they didn't, or it started out the same but something went wrong, or they just changed their minds and erased all the hybridized lineages. Who knew.

Whatever the reason, he was actually getting a whole lot more information than before, and that was the problem. In the middle of a mission, he didn't _want_ a bunch of extraneous, unnecessary data cluttering up his sightlines. Enemies, allies, useful items/places/people, and his targets -- it had worked, and worked well.

Now, everyone he looked at with his Sight was this... muddled, confusing, mishmash. Everyone lit up with a morass of color, all of it constantly shifting and rarely any of it _useful_. Trying to spot genuine gold or silver-white in all of that was an exercise in frustration a lot of the time, much less a clear and meaningful majority of blue or red, but Desmond certainly had gotten a lot of practice at it. At least objects still showed up the same to him, even if the people often made it harder to actually see them in all the mess. It had gotten to the point that he actively avoided using his Sight around too many other people unless he had to. Considering he was stranded in an entirely new world... that still meant he was using his Sight a hell of a lot more than he ever had back home barring active missions (and yes he was counting the Animus here, and screw you Shaun).

As for the version of Shaun here, it did just seem to be a check up. Shaun didn't try to establish a particularly strong rapport throughout the night, he just let things develop at a natural pace for their personalities and supposed professions. If Desmond couldn't spot the signs of an Assassin on Shaun he might have fallen for it. But to Desmond, at least, Shaun was quite clearly an active agent, even if also a surprisingly good actor.

The Sight was at least good enough to outline all Shaun's weapons for him, once Desmond concentrated, and goodness. That was a creative arsenal to hide under normal-looking business-casual. Desmond actually took note for a couple of those, that was pretty clever. His Shaun had been pretty strictly information support and handling rather than a field agent like Desmond had been, and he had never actually seen Shaun so heavily armed. It was weird.

And also, of course, he just had an unfair advantage of knowing Shaun a lot better than it looked like Shaun knew him. Unless they had been surveilling the native Desmond a _lot_ closer than he had thought, but then he would have spotted that.

#### ASSASSINS IN HIS BAR

190322 FRI 1740

So Shaun came back a few times. The relationship developed gradually, naturally. All as expected.

Then Rebecca walked in, and Shaun, once again sitting at the bar, tensed up in what sure looked like very unwelcome and slightly panicked surprise. Desmond showed nothing, because Shaun was just as obviously trying not to let Desmond see anything untoward.

Rebecca used standard 'hey friend!' protocols, very casual, no emergencies here, etc. They went off to a corner to whisper over drinks. She appeared to fiddle with a phone while idly chatting with Shaun, and Desmond bet it was some sort of discreet white noise generator combined with a bug-jammer, because his Rebecca had something similar. His Rebecca's version was a lot smaller, though. This one's version had a wire going under her jacket that looked like it was meant to be taken for the pair of earbuds coming out of her collar, only one of which was actually in her ear. Considering the way technology seemed to have developed on this world a bit differently, a bit less sleek, it was probably connected to something quite a bit bulkier under her jacket.

They couldn't have been discussing anything too sensitive, though, even with all that precaution going on. It was probably just establishing credentials and stuff, because Rebecca started showing up more often after that.

And then over the course of the next couple months, five more Assassins started showing up in their apparent downtime. Seriously.

At that point Desmond started to doubt his previous conclusions. There were no more tense confrontations in his bar, thankfully. They seemed to have already gotten past that. Presumably Rebecca had played the vanguard or something for this new wave. Most of the new lot hardly interacted with Desmond at all. Barely even looked at him, and frequently got their drinks from the other bartender on duty.

Honestly, Desmond was starting to wonder if another den had just crashed Shaun's op or something. Except that went _completely against_ everything that he had observed and read in every way in every report about how this strange version of Assassins operated.

The only reason they would act this way was if _there was no op to crash._

Which made absolutely no sense.

How the _hell_ could Shaun freaking Hastings, _active Assassin agent_ , walk into _his bar_ , and **not realize** what he was doing?

Desmond realized this world operated on _really_ tight operational security, and really, reeeeally liked their secrets, but come on. Was this _really_ implying that **no one** knew they were all relaxing in the bar of _the_ Assassin runaway? Seriously? The _son_ of their own goddamn _Mentor?_ _Seriously?_

...It would _kind of_ make sense, for this world, if William "Bill" Miles kept his family super duper top secret. That _was_ exactly the sort of thing this world would do.

So... now that he thought about it, there really wasn't any reason for the rest of the Assassin Order to know about Desmond Miles, was there? By name or by sight. Bill in _this_ universe might very well have kept his son's existence a total secret. It wasn't like even in his research raid roadtrip across the world that he had been able to find _all_ the files, after all. Desmond had concentrated on the files that would explain the history of this world to him, what made this world different. He had looked for his own files, of course he had -- but they hadn't been first priority and he hadn't been willing to devote months looking for them. But he hadn't found even a hint of them while looking for everything else.

So. Desmond was faced with the disorienting realization that he may have misinterpreted the last couple of months here completely.

Faced with that... he had no choice but to hack back into the Assassin network and figure out what the heck was going on. Because he was very confused.

Because there was no way they had just _walked_ into **his bar** for a safe spot to relax in. This was ridiculous.

Sure, okay, he had made sure to remove all the cameras he could, both inside and outside the building, and what he couldn't, he had adjusted to be pretty useless for facial identification and database mining, yeah. Cash was still an acceptable tender, okay, but this was New York City, and that wasn't too uncommon here unlike most other places. And maybe he had gradually adjusted the lighting and acoustics to be a little more comfortable for someone needing a safe corner to not flash them back in, fine. And a dozen other little things that he had done to make himself more comfortable when he'd quietly bought a slightly larger under-the-table say in how it ran.

Okay, so he could see why they might like his bar. Damnit.

He was still hacking their frickin network, though.

190322 FRI 1820

Two weeks later, because he was not a frickin amateur and he was not going to lead them right back to him, and he had his answer.

They really had just walked into his bar. Goddamnit.

Well, sort of. Shaun at least had apparently met his native version a couple of times back at Bad Weather in the middle of an op. A couple bankers had later died tragic and completely coincidental accidental deaths.

Walking into Desmond's new bar was apparently just Shaun having done a bit of looking around for a bar that wouldn't offend his sensibilities too much, and finding it because of the minor renovations Desmond had made. Finding Desmond along with it really did appear to be nothing more than pure dumb _luck._

#### OOPS A UNIVERSE

190322 FRI 1830

In reality, this world was a shadow of his universe created during the a hiccup of the Eye as Juno clawed her way out using him as a bridge. It existed at a lower energy state, naturally, which was something the Isu would NEVER have contemplated as the very idea was would have been _terrifying_ to them. Desmond alone had come across unchanged because he had been at the epicenter of the effect, and his subconscious had placed him back at Bad Weather, but _after_ the Flare, with the Earth safely bustling on.

His old universe continued on without him, mourned him, and moved on.

This brand new universe had no idea, and never would, that it had just sprang into being by pure, simple accident.

As a side effect of being a lower-energy universe, the records showed that there was a Solar Maximum here, but no Solar Flare of Global Doom. Even if Desmond's subconscious had placed him _before_ the Flare in this new universe instead of after, it still wouldn't have happened, and he would have seen a normal Solar Maximum. Desmond didn't know any of this.

There would, in fact, be on average _many_ fewer violent celestial events across the entirety of this universe, but Desmond would never learn any of that. Or the fact that, because of both that and the much larger fact that the expansion of the universe _itself_ was slower here, the functional lifespan of this universe was actually quite a bit longer than his original universe, by an order of magnitude. But, also as a side effect, faster-than-light travel was now impossible.

There were a lot of those kind of differences that would affect his new baby universe on a truly cosmic scale, and Desmond, oblivious Creator that he was, knew none of it. Probably for the best.

All the minute changes that Desmond had noted and puzzled over in the historical records were merely byproducts of this universe's cause and effect making sense of things within the constraints that it was born with. The new timeline rippled back and forth around its one solid fact -- Desmond Miles -- and settled into its newborn existence in a form that made at least some coherent sense to _him_. It was his subconscious that had influenced its creation, in so many ways, after all, and so history and time had been inextricably bound to his expectations.

The greatest problem in simply copying Desmond's original universe, of course, was that the newborn universe had so much less energy to work with, being born the way it was. It _started_ as a perfect copy of Desmond's universe, but everything higher-energy just evaporated from existence as it simply could not be sustained by the rules of this new universe.

That included all the technology of the Isu -- which was why they would never, ever, ever have thought of trying to escape their fate by fleeing to a fabricated universe themselves. They had already done these experiments, and found that one could only create universes of either significantly lesser energy levels than one's own, or drastically fewer dimensions. It was simply impossible to do otherwise. And given that they had been experimenting with significantly less energy and computing power to begin with than the Eye had held, the universes they had created had been _much_ inferior to the one Desmond accidentally created. To the Isu, this was _never_ an option.

If Desmond _had_ known, he would have been _incredibly_ pissed, though. A way to transport the whole of humanity to a fresh new world with **no** other Isu influence whatsoever? If this had been done deliberately, any sort of world could have been devised, a paradise to start over in, whatever they wanted.

But since it was an accident, only Desmond was sent over, and the universe was just a simple copy, including all the seven billion people of Earth and all the history and tragedy they brought with them. The timeline was left to smooth out its own time paradoxes, with no actual Pieces of Eden to explain that history.

So over seven billion people found themselves in roughly the same places, doing roughly the same things, that another version of themselves had once been doing in another world. But the thinking behind those actions, the rationalizations -- those had to be adjusted to make sense within a world where the causes behind those actions may have just evaporated from existence.

Why would Assassins and Templars be fighting, without the Pieces of Eden to motivate them?

Hence the rather confusing mess Desmond found when he had gone looking.

The Temples here were just crumbling ruins, ancient and impressive, but nothing more than stone. The history of their secret war made little _real_ logical sense because it was a shadow lifted from Desmond's own reality, and merely smudged a bit to make just enough to sense to be getting on with.

It was the memories and technologies and _actions_ of the living and breathing present day people that were _very real_ for all that they had just come into existence, where the true differences started to show themselves.

#### CAUGHT WITH ASSASSINS

190514 TUE 1413

So eventually the inevitable happened, and Desmond got swept up in their Assassin business by simple proximity and bad luck, or so they thought. In reality, he was nosy and had a sixth sense they couldn't account for. Of course.

And like with Shaun, once he was marked by their enemies, even if it was by mistake, they couldn't just abandon him or it would be his death sentence, as far as they knew. So they had to take him along. Despite his strenuous objections.

He wasn't objecting to having to leave his old life behind, mind you, or even going into hiding or anything like that. He just objected to being schlepped along like spare luggage. He kept insisting that he could just be dropped off anywhere, really, he'd be _fine_. During any action he went along with them just fine, no problems. It was the downtime when he started making a pest of himself, when it wouldn't actually endanger anyone. He was quite reasonable about everything.

Which eventually lead to him facing William Miles, and _fully_ expecting to be busted as the runaway son right then and there.

Except Bill didn't actually seem to recognize him? What?

Desmond was so confused.

So he really was just dropped into this universe full-bore? The identity he found here was just magicked up for him, then, other people's memories and all. There _was_ no native Desmond Miles before he got here. Or maybe the native had died as a child or something?

To be honest, it was a huge relief. He hadn't replaced anybody. That had been bothering him.

It did mean he might end up stuck with the Assassins calling him Jake for the foreseeable future, though. Weird to hear the wrong name coming out of his own Dad's mouth.

Of course he wouldn't turn out that lucky.

Being Assassins, naturally, they had already known that his ID was fake. He had known that they had known, etc, and all that. Desmond had gone through the effort of making it look like a fairly standard story, though. Enough levels of obscuration that they wouldn't find an _actual_ ID, but enough "secret" information for them to dig up that they should feel informed of his personal motivations, more or less.

Survivor's guilt, trauma, minor drug trafficking involvement, bit off too much for himself with some people in South America, miraculously survived but got damn effectively scared out of the business, ran to New York to hide, bought the best ID affordable, and then set up the bar for a quiet life of retirement. Simple, straightforward, explained everything with just enough dirty secrets to be believable without being unnecessarily complicated.

Well, Desmond thought so anyway. It was possible his standards had been a bit skewed. But honestly, from his personal experience, it really did seem like a perfectly reasonable explanation. Made perfect sense.

That ID was what the Assassins would find when they ran the second, deeper background check on him after realizing his civilian ID wasn't actually real. It should have taken a while, if he had done his work right, but eventually would have unraveled into a coherent, believable story for them, as designed. Without ever _actually_ pointing them to a real, legitimate identity. It was, if he said so himself, a work of art.

So when Bill Miles appeared not to recognize him, Desmond thought, aha. Home free. No actual counterpart in this universe to worry about after all, no record, no history -- clean slate.

Except, no, it turned out he wasn't quite that lucky after all.

Bill genuinely _didn't_ recognize him -- at first. But something must have niggled at him, because he kept picking at it. He wasn't satisfied with the story they had dug up on Desmond so far -- which wasn't quite the full epic he had woven, but close to it. They had gotten to all but the last couple of layers, and had _almost_ the whole picture he had laid out for them to find.

Bill wasn't satisfied with any of it. Good instincts, maybe.

It turned out there _was_ a place for Desmond Miles in this universe, but it was a _hell_ of a lot more complicated and ridiculous than anything he had come up with on his own. Definitely something that had to have been magicked into the fabric of reality to justify some weird out-of-universe alien just suddenly popping out of nowhere. But seriously, why had the universe explained his existence with an absurd story like _this_? Why couldn't he have just been dropped in anonymously and left on his own? He was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. This was ridiculous.

It only fleetingly occurred to Desmond that perhaps this was _Bill_ justifying his existence, not the universe itself, before he brushed that off as far too ridiculous a possibility to entertain.

190514 TUE 1455

What explanation. In vitro fertilization experiment for sinister training, liberated then lost? Bastard son unacknowledged to callous shame, lost to neglect and unreported from fear for too long to find? Unknown beginning, but DNA is clearly Y-chromosomal descent from Bill? Possibilities. Convoluted story with distant beginning, stolen, lost, passage of time presuming for good, and now here he is. Civilian. Apparently. How did Bill recognize him? Not by appearance. Not by DNA?

Or should we stick with young child Desmond Miles who ran away and was never seen again? That way they could have his fingerprints.

So many options.

#### ALIEN REVEAL

190713 SAT 0920

Either way, they didn't recognize the alien aspect of his DNA for quite a while. Stable triple helix DNA was just not a _thing_ on this Earth. There were parts of human DNA that were triple and even quadruple helix, but they were isolated, very specialized areas, and _nothing_ like Isu DNA. Nothing at all like Desmond's.

It took very specialized equipment that actually knew what it was looking for to identify that sort of thing, and they didn't. All their current, usual tests relied on stuff like breaking down the DNA and running it through recognition algorithms and such. The algorithms had to be _taught_ to recognize something before they could flag it. Isu DNA was simply too alien and just... didn't get recognized. The more _human_ parts of Desmond's DNA did, though, if with more errors than usual. It was enough to let him pass those more basic tests without much scrutiny other than what the human parts of his DNA merited. Considering whose son he turned out to be. They couldn't possibly have found the true discrepancy without first looking at his DNA under a powerful enough microscope. That would only be by accident while looking for something else.

It was the thing they didn't know they didn't know.

When they _did_ finally get there, of course, the entire story took a wild tonal shift. Nothing in their entire world was capable of manipulating DNA to that degree. Nothing. Which meant aliens or time travelers. There were **no** other options.

Which meant they _could not_ let Desmond know they had realized what he was. Because what if he was programmed (he was almost certainly programmed). They had no idea what would happen. They couldn't risk it. They couldn't kill him either, couldn't risk that. A civilization capable of this? It could wipe them out in a heartbeat. They _dared_ not piss them off. They just had to observe, and _very carefully_ test what they could without in any way letting Desmond know. Because he could never know.

Because to all appearances he really _didn't_.

(If we go with the necessary backstory.) What kind of people would do this to Bill's son, and why? And then just leave him out in the middle of nowhere instead of giving him back like they clearly could have -- anyone capable of this _could_ have adjusted memories so no one remembered Desmond was ever missing at all. They just chose not to.

There was some speculation that the adjusted memories were of Desmond ever having existed in the first place, and that perhaps Bill _hadn't_ ever had a son -- but the actual corroborating evidence didn't support that hypothesis. Desmond himself, as much as he _hadn't_ wanted to get entangled with the Assassins but had probably been programmed to do anyway, didn't support it.

#### PLOT

190713 SAT 0930

The problem with the alien reveal was that this particular universe balanced on a thread of wild paranoia. They existed in a world without great mythic epics composed of gods and time travel and sacrifices to save the world from armageddon. Their stories were small, personal, twisty, bitter.

And then you threw in an alien? It blew everything apart into ruin and disarray. They couldn't handle it, couldn't process it. It didn't fit in their world, and trying to make it fit just... twisted them. And they twisted it. More and more the longer things went on. The only way I could see it working is by cutting the proverbial Gordian knot. Just prevent them from trying to fit it into their worldview at all.

I have one idea of a doctor-scientist, nervous and trying to stave off thoughts of his own inevitable execution for knowing too much, babbling to himself as much as Bill about possible personality types and thought processes behind the aliens who had created/manipulated Desmond. He had to keep reminding himself these were aliens, he had no way of knowing if any of this conjecture was in any way relevant because human logic just might not _apply_ , but they had nothing else so he had to try and just always keep in mind the strong possibility of the alternative.

So he would babble on about possible human logic motives and paths and such, but always occasionally cut off to remind himself that all of this may be moot if human logic did not apply.

And then, of course, there was always the singular possibility that the reason the alien had gone through all of this and then just left Desmond here with no theoretical goals, restrictions, or programming, was simply to poke the anthill with a stick. That was always a possibility. You never knew when you'd just get a near omnipotent kid with a stick who was bored enough to poke some ants. Chaos happened.

That might, in fact, be the only scenario in which these particular versions of the Assassins didn't just drive themselves insane.

Otherwise, without _clearly_ demonstrating that there was _nothing_ they could do to hurt him, they would inevitably feel driven to try by their own paranoia. And in that scenario he was so far removed from humanity, what was the point? It's sad.

I know there was some convoluted path to walk where they got to thread the needle, but I kept running into walls when I tried it. Maybe with enough trial and error I could get there.

That particular scientist-doctor, by the way, got promoted to be the head of the secret Desmond research project, as long as he could keep himself from imploding from the stress. He managed to save his most valuable assistants by bringing them into the project with him, but had no illusions that their lives weren't hanging by a precarious balance. Plus, you know. Aliens (and/or timetravelers). He was in no way qualified for any of this, but he had been the lead medical researcher to discover Desmond's true nature, and information security pretty much dictated that he had better _become_ qualified because getting replaced by someone better, on a project of this importance, meant a bullet. So yeah. He was a bit stressed.


	13. renaissance, abo, blind in the woods

200203 MON 0614

She had finally smelled him, Ezio realized. Her sense of smell must have been as crippled as her sight; she should have smelled him _hours_ ago.

"I mean no harm," he murmured as calm and soft and soothing as he knew how.

She still froze, like a rabbit, her breath fast and shallow as her wide, white, blind eyes fixed on his voice. He could see her panicking.

"You seem hurt, and hungry, and terribly alone, Miss. I only have concern," Ezio said, trying to stall her reaction. It somewhat worked, a look of confusion flitting across her face as she almost automatically glanced down at herself despite the fact that she would be able to see nothing. So she hadn't always been blind, then. She quickly shook that off, though, and he could practically see her thoughts returning to their frantic tumble as she backed away from him, her head darting back and forth as she desperately scented the air and strained to hear any hint of sound.

Ezio deliberately rustled his clothes as he slowly moved from the fallen tree, setting his boots into dry leaves for her to hear. Her head snapped back toward him, an expression of faint surprise on her face before it was subsumed by focus. Had she expected him to have moved already, then, and silently? He certainly could have, but most people could _not_ , and it was interesting that she would expect that.

But then, she might simply have the intelligence to realize that he had to have been following her silently for quite some time already. Most people, when panicking, weren't able to think that logically. That was definitely interesting.

"I only wish to help," he tried to soothe. "I have food, and drink, and a fire if you'd like."

She was so very thin. The myriad of cuts and scrapes and bruises on her, along with the generous coating of dirt, could all be expected of a blind omega stumbling about in the woods. Especially one who was nearly as blind to scent as she was to sight. But that she was so _thin_ spoke of something worse, and her various scars and callouses even more so. No omega should look like that. He could count every single one of her ribs.

She must have been out there for some time, yes -- but she was plainly unable to fend for herself. Just looking at her fumbling her way through the woods made that clear enough. She couldn't have been there _that_ long.

Most of what was written on her body was from before she was left in the woods. She could only have been out there for a week at most.

Despite her very reasonable fear of some strange alpha suddenly coming up on her from nowhere, the offer of food and fire clearly tempted her. He watched her waver, uncertainty writ clear in her posture even as she tried to keep her face from giving herself away.

Desmond, meanwhile, was trying to tell himself that derailing this world's fate just because he was hungry was a _bad idea_ , all while still slightly confused as to why this Ezio had called him "Miss".

And seriously. _How did Ezio keep finding him?_


	14. Summoned, 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After thinking on some of the comments, I have decided this chapter deserves an extra warning: there is a sudden dark turn of tone here. There is no permanent character death or maiming (not counting the fact that Desmond technically died via the Eye before the story ever started), but I have been informed that this has quite a gut-punch to it nonetheless. Please be prepared and take care of yourself.

I usually have post-Eye Desmond physically manifest somewhere, but not here. In this world, a Desmond from a magic universe with True Names desperately reached out for help. He was only a child, _much_ younger than sixteen, and already had just received the split through his lip that would scar him for life. This William Miles was much more cold, and pushed his son much too far. This Desmond Miles was so lost, so tired. Even so very young. He inadvertently did magic, deep in his soul, curled up in his bed, and reached out for something, anything, to help him.

The Eye used that, latched on and punted over its dying Desmond before he knew what was going on, maybe? Or had this Desmond already gone through one world? I'm not sure which would work better. To have this be the traveler's first world or not.

Either way, from the child's perspective, a burning, dying, screaming angel was called and caught by his blind, dreaming _reach_ , and little Desmond automatically, immediately knew that this angel had no sense of what was happening, knew nothing beyond its own pain.

It slammed into little Desmond's mind and _burned_ into it as such a being could not help but do, subsuming the child without effort or malice or even trying at all. Little Desmond could see this happening from within himself, as it was happening, and knew it wasn't the angel's choice.

He could also see the moment the angel became _aware_ that Desmond was, in fact, _there_ , because it immediately slammed to as much of a halt as it could. Shock and horror rolled off of it and Desmond could _feel_ all of it. Its burning wings of fire and light and pain and memory spread wide as the horizon and blocked the tide of the _pull_ that was sweeping the two of them together with a will so much stronger than anything Desmond had ever felt before. It hurt the angel, to hold back the impossible, the inevitable, but it held itself back all the same, and it looked at Desmond with horror and grief and sorrow and was _so sorry_.

It knew it was dying. It remembered its death now, where before it had not been able, not coherent or conscious. But now, enough of Desmond's mind had been taken by the angel that it could put enough of itself, of its own mind, back together. It had realized what it was, and what it was before, and what was happening to Desmond now.

Desmond was being taken over by the angel, but the angel was so much _older_ and so much _stronger_ that Desmond had no hope, no hope at all of holding up under the tide. He would wash away and be subsumed, and Desmond knew this the way the _angel_ knew this, with certainty that could not be questioned.

He did not understand the reasons why, he could not understand the explanations that laid behind that understanding. The thoughts and rationale were too alien and strange to his worldview, fracturing away into splinters before he could fit them into concepts he could hold onto.

But he could understand that final result of the thought stream: When the merging, the melding of their minds was finished, Desmond would go to sleep, and the angel would be the one walking in his body. And it was _sorry_.

It shouldn't be this way. The angel was the one who was dead, or at least dying -- Desmond was the one who was alive, the one who had asked for _help_. Desmond was the one who was supposed to be awake, able to call upon the angel's memory in need, not the other way around. It was not supposed to be this way. The angel was so sorry.

Desmond wasn't used to people being sorry for hurting him. For not being able to help him. For wanting to help him at all. It felt good.

And... he was kinda tired anyway.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, sleeping within the angel. It wouldn't be bad with his body, right?

No, the angel rang with sorrow at him, utterly ignoring the agony from holding back the force of the universe behind its wings. No, it wouldn't be bad with Desmond's body. It would try to be good with it, and do good things -- and Desmond could help with that.

Desmond was confused, and didn't have to ask. The angel could feel him, just like Desmond could feel the angel whenever it felt anything here in his mind. Here, every emotion rippled and rang out unmistakably between them.

Desmond would be dreaming, deep down, the angel explained very gently, and while Desmond wouldn't get a very clear idea of what was happening from so deep, he would get the gist of things, because the angel would make sure he did. If he wanted something very badly, the angel would _hear_ Desmond, and the angel would try its best to make it happen. And Desmond could feel the promise in that, as solemn as a vow between them. If there was a lot happening and it was very noisy then the angel might not hear Desmond at first, it continued, but Desmond just had to shout louder in his dream, because the angel _would_ be listening, even if it might be distracted sometimes. It _would_ listen.

And no one had ever promised to listen to Desmond, either. Not and _meant_ it. Desmond could feel the angel _meaning_ it.

So, no. This wasn't so bad. Not really. It could have been a lot worse.

And Desmond knew a little about these things, not much, but a little. Just the stuff that everybody knew, really, but that was enough. So he looked up at the angel, and it looked down at him. It knew his decision, and it was so _sad_. Even its burning feathers of fire, still holding back the howling hurricane of the eternities, drooped a bit.

"My true Name is Desmond Miles," Desmond said, and that _echoed_ with the intent with which he imbued it.

The angel... hesitated. Desmond was confused, until it lowered itself into the closest thing to a bow that it could while still straining its wings back, and craned its neck down to something like the same level of Desmond. When it opened its mouth to murmur to him, the angel's reluctance to continue this ritual dripped from every word even as it both honored his choice and bowed beneath the inevitable.

As you would define it, the angel murmured to him, I don't actually have what you would call a True Name, and so cannot introduce myself properly.

Desmond blinked, agape, because that was _impossible_ , but the truth was there, in their mind, in the angel's thoughts, bare to see, even if Desmond couldn't understand, couldn't _translate_ the meanings behind the explanations offered behind that truth. The alienness of the shapes of what the angel thought so often broke apart into shining glittering shards when they tried to transfer into the part of their mind that was still Desmond's alone. He couldn't translate them, couldn't make them fit into his understanding of reality. But the simplest of truths, bare of the explanation of _whys_ behind them, could stand on their own, and this one stood where Desmond could see it, as impossible and incomprehensible as it was.

The angel really didn't have a True Name. Just... didn't have one. Desmond tried to grasp the reason why but the shards of it kept shattering in his mental hands, no matter how the angel tried to offer it, in what shape or configuration. It was just too alien.

And then the angel was driven to one knee in absolute agony and exhaustion, and Desmond startled out of his own frustration with trying to understand this alien concept. Desmond abruptly realized that the angel had allowed him to become distracted. It had deliberately allowed him to waste time trying to pointlessly understand this thing he simply _could not_ understand because he was too human and the angel too alien. Not only had the angel not said a word while the forces of the universe were _burning it alive_ for not finishing the possession, but it had not even _hinted_ within their shared mind that Desmond should spare a thought to hurrying up. Not a hint.

Desmond froze and just stared at the panting, straining, _agonized_ angel, holding back the universe just so that Desmond could spend a little more time as purely himself, wasting time doing nothing but what he wanted to do for no reason at all but that he wanted to do it.

Stupid fucking angel. Desmond was going to have to keep an eye on that martyr complex from inside the dream. Desmond sniffed, and ignored his watery eyes.

He let go of the sharp, strangely angled thoughts in his hands, and looked up at the angel. It looked sadly back down at him, understanding that there would be no more stalling. The great wings began to buckle, and bow.

"You can use my Name," Desmond said, "as long as you're in my body."

The angel walked slowly and painfully closer, then knelt down. All around it alien memory and thought washed around the edges of its wings. With every step, its bright gold, flaming form grew more distinct, more solid, fading into flesh. By the time it knelt in front of him, it looked every bit like an almost normal man. He looked a lot like Desmond, just grown up, wearing jeans and a white hoodie. He even had a pale scar on his lips, where Desmond had a raw cut still red and sore on his.

The wings were only an impression of themselves now, barely visible, that held back just the space around the two of them and no more.

Desmond couldn't see, couldn't feel anything else but the angel-man, anymore. He looked so sad, and when he put his hands on Desmond's shoulders, they were so warm.

"I'll take care of you," the man said, and Desmond believed him. The man's eyes were wet, and big, and sad, and he drew Desmond in to his chest, and his arms came around his shoulders, and his great invisible wings swept around to enclose them both entirely, and Desmond went to sleep.

He was so tired.

And this was so _warm_.

-

When Desmond snapped his eyes open to the cold dry South Dakota air, he had one good long moment of blankness where he just stared at the wall next to his cot.

Then he remembered.

And then, he was **_furious_**.

So the fuck what if this body was only seven years old.

FUCK this world.

Desmond Miles disappeared from the Farm the day after his father William "Bill" Miles split his lips open during a sparring match that no one openly admitted to having known he was doing with a seven-year-old child.

But they knew.

Being that he _was_ only seven, it was widely accepted that someone on the Farm had finally had enough and snapped, and a thorough investigation was launched, but was stymied at every turn by the extreme lack of cooperation from William Miles himself.

His rather extreme methods had kept him from final consideration for the Mentor position in the past, and this particular short-sighted and increasingly obsessive, borderline behavior began to raise red flags. A more thorough investigation into _him_ was proposed, struck down, proposed again two weeks later, considered, and after further observation, finally approved.

The results of that investigation would bar William Miles from the Mentor position for the rest of his life. He would never know any of this.


	15. post-death, modern fragile + gifts light, 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slowing down now, unfortunately. Knew this would happen, no spurt of productivity lasts me for long. But l'm gonna keep going, kay? Just slower now. (tired smile)

He didn't know why they didn't use the old Assassin techniques here. They just... didn't. He kept a liberal 'eye' out to make sure he wasn't missing them, but they really just didn't seem to ever use the older techniques anymore. It was odd.

Not that the Gifts this world _did_ have weren't useful in their own right -- and not that they didn't keep tripping Desmond up. He wasn't used to them like a real native would be and didn't anticipate them when he should.

He _still_ got caught by the frustrating things every now and then, even years later, even with his Sight on high alert _specifically looking out for them_.

It had taken almost two years here for the Eagle Vision to develop a good sensitivity to both technology and Gifts. It had been pure self-preservation. Without some way to avoid the constant technological surveillance of the modern world as well as the _Gifts_ this world kept tripping him up with, he was _constantly_ getting mowed down.

He barely crawled away with his wounds several times in those first couple of years. He was lucky to survive, really, even with all his advantages. It was no surprise his Sight evolved, when you thought about it. Technology and Gifts were _the_ threats of this life, and so that's what he attuned to. _Finally._

After that, he started getting hurt a _lot_ less, getting caught less, making less mess. But of course by then his reputation as "A" had been pretty well set. Loud and messy as it was possible to be while still accomplishing all objectives, basically. Which... had not been what he was hoping for, to be honest.

If Desmond had had a choice, he really would have liked to go down a more sneaky, in-and-out, leave-no-trace route. Ninja-like. Just go in, get the objective, get out, leave the data with the Assassins, and vanish with none the wiser. He honestly would have preferred if _no one_ had known just who was doing what, or how, or anything.

But nope.

Turned out he was the appallingly, humiliatingly, mortifyingly modern-day recreation of every single one of his overly dramatic, unnecessarily violent ancestors in all their vibrantly bloody glory, including the questionable explosions.

Honestly, he had no idea where some of those explosions came from.

They just _appeared_.

It was like his life was a Michael Bay movie.

And maybe if he had waited until he had a better hold of this world's powers and such, maybe if he'd had a better grip of his own abilities, maybe he would have made a better showing of himself.

Maybe he wouldn't have made such a glorious mess of pretty much every single mission he attempted in those first couple of years while he was getting his feet under him.

But he just wasn't willing to wait. Not when he knew exactly what Abstergo was going to _do_ in those years.

So a glorious mess he made. Unnecessary explosions included.

He _was_ confused, however, about the _opinion_ that eventually formed around his reputation for loud and messy, if effective, tactics.

Because, honestly. With the mess he made? He hadn't been expecting much. Maybe they'd nickname him the 'Wrecker' or something if he was really lucky.

Desmond had just... stared for the longest time at the screen after he _finally_ managed to sidle his way into the Assassins' communications, and saw what they were saying about him. (That had taken _forever_ because hacking was just _not_ his area.)

What they were saying about him made... no sense. Whatsoever.

Granted, yes, okay, sure -- Desmond may be _sloppy_ but he wasn't going to be _stupid_ \-- he _had_ learned from all his ancestors mistakes, after all. So, yeah, for all the violent bloody messiness and being seen all over the place and getting caught right and left and the way too many explosions and why do these buildings collapse so easily anyway -- well. Despite all that -- Desmond _did_ try to make sure to actually, you know, _be thorough_. Kind of a hard habit to shake after the Animus, you know? All those achievements. He blamed Rebecca.

He liked to get the job done. It made him feel all tingly. And deeply satisfied, like a dragon hoarding over gold. Even if he was dragging himself home to a boarded up shack with canned spaghettios to look forward to as he healed from, like, seven gunshot wounds, two of which were actually kind of serious. That had been a bad mission.

And yeah, he kind of had an unfair advantage in knowing a couple locations ahead of time, and being able to use his own pseudo "Gift" of the Sight to extrapolate from there as to where he needed to dig. So he was really good at finding stuff compared to normal people, sure, okay, he got that part.

But how did that combine into somehow being some kind of super ninja-spy assassin or whatever? Because that was what it sounded like they were saying. _Not_ that he was the most embarrassingly loud, clumsy, over-compensating-with-violence pseudo-Assassin in history, nope.

What was up with these people's standards?

He got that he was digging up all this heretofore completely unsuspected and utterly life-and-death information and all, but he was making a _hell_ of a mess while doing it. The Templars tried to clamp down on as much detail of his attacks as they could, but there was too much to hide for long.

The Assassins saw fairly well what he did, especially in those first two years. Somehow that just... seemed perfectly fine and okay and in line with their ideal Assassin? Like, what?

What they had gleaned from his "style" (and Desmond cringed), they for some reason had no problem at all collating with a supposed master of stealth and murder, as they speculated him to be.

They thought him a person not actually affiliated with the Assassins, but sympathetic, and they were all _aflutter_ , and Desmond was _confused_. They were actually gossiping about trying to woo him into the Assassins Order. Arguing about what might be keeping him from just approaching, what might be holding him back, what they might do to mitigate that, etc. It was a _debate_. It had a _forum_.

It was a small forum, but it was _there_. _The local version of Shaun was a member._

After just staring at the air in bewilderment for a long while, Desmond closed the laptop and resolved to never look at that particular section again.

Some things in this world were just too confusing for him right then, and he had to concentrate.


	16. post-death, modern fragile + gifts light, 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote what felt like half of this part. It’s much longer now, as has been happening with several of the fic ideas I’ve put up here. Hopefully it’s also more polished.

190401 MON 0040

When the Assassins finally _did_ manage contact with Desmond as "A" in person, he was wearing a full-face mask, to their not-very-hidden disappointment.

He had learned right at the beginning in this world that he had to wear pitch black wrap-around sunglasses if he ever wanted to use Eagle Vision in public again. For some reason, here it physically made his eyes light up really obviously. He had even gotten a camera just to double check, but no, it wasn't just him hallucinating.

At first he had tried just keeping the sunglasses in his bag or a pocket or even on those tethers around the neck, but that had proven a mistake. It turned out that even just the second's delay it took to reach out, pick up the sunglasses, unfold them, and then slip them on was long enough to leave him with unpleasant and untimely surprises when living the kind of life he had chosen in _this_ kind of world, especially when for that vital second at least one hand was also tied up. In this world he was relying on his Sight far too heavily for that, he needed to be able to focus it near instantly. He only had to nearly get shot twice and almost lose his target once to get that lesson.

So he ended up keeping the sunglasses up on the crest of his head under his hoodie, precariously balanced so a quick tilt of the head would drop them in place whenever he needed them. This resulted in the glasses often falling onto his face when he _didn't_ need them as well, but better that than the alternative. He took to practicing the shift of his head that would drop them in place when he didn't have anything else to do and knew no one would see him acting like an idiot.

Since he generally didn't actually like walking around looking like a douche, as it was often not nearly bright enough to actually justify them, he still mostly kept them tucked away. As a consequence he had to wear his hood up most of the time, partially to hide the sunglasses but mostly just to keep them in place. It wasn't that much better than just wearing the glasses all the time, but he was trying to be more circumspect with cameras in this life anyway, so it was the sunglasses or the hoodie.

When it came time to make a more concealing mask for his persona as A, though, he hadn't wanted to just use sunglass lenses. That would hamper his vision whenever he _wasn't_ using his Sight, and he couldn't just keep his Sight on all the time.

After thinking about it he cased eyeglass shops until he found one with samples of various coatings they offered for way too much money. Then he stole their boxes of samples. It took a while to work out which combination of films would block out the glow of his eyes without hampering his vision too much otherwise. It took even longer to find a distributor that would send him high-impact optical quality polycarbonate with those specific coatings, considering he was doing everything anonymous.

He did dump the box of samples back near the eyeglass shop where they would find it again.

Once he finally got the stupid mask looking at least acceptably decent, he started wearing it on his missions pretty much straight off. Trying to keep his glowing eyes under wraps on an active mission when the stupid sunglasses kept practically flying off at the worst possible moments had been... fun. For missions he had naturally kept them on a tether that _should_ have held them pretty firmly on his head, and as sport-styled sunglasses they really should have stayed on better anyway. But at least once a mission, for some reason, the glasses just... flew off. It only ever seemed to happen when he _really didn't want it to_ , as well. Very inconvenient.

The mask made things easier in that respect, at least, even if it made him _even more conspicuous_ in practically every other way. At that point he had given up fighting against it, even if he hadn't admitted that to himself yet. But at the very least he could relax about his stupid eyes glowing all over the place mid-mission. For the rest of the time, he made do with the glasses.

When the Assassins catch up to him as _Desmond_ , he's in his usual hoodie and sunglasses, slouching around avoiding notice and generally being a disappointment to everything his father had hoped for. Desmond would be pleased, except for the part where they swept him up in their mess to begin with.

He had never made the mistake of catching Abstergo's radar in this world. The morning he woke up here he had frozen and focused Sight for any red nearing his position. There had been nothing. He still rabbited that morning, slipping out the window and ghosting about the city as he tried to get his bearings. He didn't keep that job, or that apartment. He did learn from his mistakes. He slipped into a more transient and harder-to-track lifestyle than the one that had gotten him caught in the last life. It made it a lot easier to disappear.

Still, it was inevitable that he would end up entangling with the Assassins one way or another. He tried to prepare for it.

190401 MON 0120

William Miles was a bad Mentor for the Assassin Brotherhood. He was reckless with their lives, and did too little to earn their loyalty. He took them and their devotion for granted, and it was costing everyone.

Despite all that -- somehow, he wasn't taking the threat of the Templars serious _enough_. Desmond didn't get how that worked. Bill was all _about_ the Templar menace when Desmond was a child, and considering the native guy had run away too (not thinking about the native guy where was the native guy oh god where was the native guy _did I eat him_ ) he was looking pretty similar here too. Everything Desmond had been able to dig up read the same as far as Bill's orders here, and looked to be heading for the same tragic ends, even _with_ all these Gifts thrown into the mix.

And yet, and yet. Despite _everything_ , despite _all of it_ \-- Bill was just not doing enough. He was throwing lives away on useless crap that _wasn't working_ instead of actually moving to attack properly, or just.... doing anything actually proactive.

Maybe Desmond was biased -- he fully acknowledged that he couldn't judge Bill clearly after all their history. And judging _anyone_ from hindsight was just harsh, he knew that.

But he couldn't help but see all the places where Desmond's other ancestors had made mistakes, and the reasons they had made them, and compare them to Bill's.

And Bill kept coming up short. The others, after all, had _learned_. How many people was Bill going to sacrifice before he started learning the same lessons?

Desmond just wasn't willing to wait. So he started fixing Bill's mistakes for him, and _shoving them in his face_.

If he refused to learn any other way...

Maybe the Assassins would wise up and pick another Mentor, at least. One could dream.

One in particular that Desmond took _specific_ joy in dismantling in its nascent stages was the Animus Project. He _gleefully_ smeared that one aaaaaall over. He knew he hadn't gotten to Lucy in time, though. She was a Templar by then.

He checked. Twice. Then he... made sure the Assassins knew that. And that Lucy knew they did too.

He did save Clay.

190401 MON 0140

He made it a point, after accepting that he wasn't getting out of the bombastic reputation, to try to send the _real_ details of the projects they were working on to all the lower down Templar employees. Avoiding alerting the _innocent_ employees who had no idea what was going on at all, while still getting the information to the lower level _Templar_ employees in such a way that it wouldn't be immediately obvious to their bosses -- that was a challenge. If he managed to open the eyes of even just a few like Lucy before they got indoctrinated too deep to pull out, though, then it was worth it.

Most of the time, though, he was robbing Templars blind of all their hard-stolen Pieces of Eden and blowing all their shit up. And killing all their top brass and operatives while he was at it -- the ones who actually knew what was going on, and approved of the human abuses they justified on their way to a unified, enslaved humanity.

It would all be a lot easier if so many of them didn't come with those aggravating unpredictable _Gifts_ this world kept screwing him over with.

The technology was grueling enough, now that he was on his own with no Rebecca and Shaun to handle that for him anymore. But eventually he _had_ adjusted -- more or less -- even if that was mostly by cheating with his Sight. But the infuriating Gifts were the gifts that kept on _giving_. Whenever he thought he had a handle on things they just kept popping up a new and exciting unexpected angle for him to nearly die over; it was very frustrating. And obviously all the movers and shakers of this world either had high-level Gifts themselves or employed bodyguards who did or _both_ , which was just lovely, let me tell you, fun for the whole family.

Honestly, if Desmond was even a fraction less Isu and more human like these people were, and therefore even a _fraction_ less hardy than he actually was -- like, say, as fragile as _these_ people actually were -- he would not have survived a single awful, horrible, pathetic, ridiculous, lousy mission.

Okay, maybe two.

So okay, maybe he _sort_ of understood the reputation thing but for _fuck's_ sake--

Nope. Made a promise, not going to think about the reputation thing. Nope, nope, nope.

Desmond puffed out a sigh, shook his head, and rubbed a hand up through his hair.

190401 MON 1035

I can pull Jupiter nagging Minerva and Juno into programming Desmond's genetics into _all_ the Pieces of Eden, just in case, regardless of what the Calculations have to say. His domain is the past, after all. He knows _damn_ well how often the little things come back to _bite_ you, and he just does not have Minerva's confidence. He also knows of mortal _mistakes_ , after all. Minerva's very realm of expertise begets her overconfidence, by nature. Jupiter's realm, by _its_ nature, does the opposite. So yes, he finagles precautions, when he can. What would not cost much energy, what would actually last, what might actually make a difference, should the worst come to pass. Thankfully.

It proves very useful indeed when Desmond sets out on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge and starts clearing house of every Piece of Eden the Templars have ever gotten their hands on.

Bleeding their nasty little secrets across the world stage is just so viscerally satisfying, and more of a side benefit, really.

What Desmond did _not_ expect was some of the Pieces to actually self-destruct when he touched them. That was odd. Apparently Jupiter was pretty thorough when he programmed failsafes. If a Piece threatened the Ultimate Plan because of some _other's_ attempt at meddling, whether human or Isu it didn't matter, then Jupiter's higher Admin-level authority pulled rank and force-quit the thing, apparently. Desmond honestly thought it was kind of cool, the look on some Templar's face when their precious, priceless artifact just crumbled into so much gold dust at the merest brush of his hands.

He got the _coolest_ reputation from it with them.

Not like with the Assassins -- he wasn't thinking about how the Assassins were talking about him.

But how the _Templars_ were talking about him -- now that was solid _gold_.

Desmond _loved_ spying on whatever conspiracy theories the Templars were spinning up about him that week. It was _hilarious_. He had snuck in a few rumors himself, just to see what they would do. It was the highlight of his day, the freaking out going on in the Templar communications networks.

He could check it a hell of a lot more often than the Assassins, too. Pretty much whenever he was breaking into their operations, he would steal to an open, already unlocked station -- after shoving aside the still-warm corpse -- and just go snooping for a bit before he got to the proper meat of the mission. Much easier than trying to delicately break into the Assassins' communications without actually alerting or killing anyone.

190401 MON 2000

Obviously when the Assassins finally do encounter Desmond they think his Gift was just evasion something or other, right? It usually manifests around sixteen, right when he ran away, and he's such a loser he obviously couldn't have done it himself. So it must have helped him escape, and it's been helping him evade them ever since.

If a fight then breaks out and Desmond then has to demonstrate fighting ability, he can proceed to wow them with skillz. If he is injured with a stab wound, he can weird them out with unconcern. As in, actual, genuine, non-macho, not-faking, "HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU BEEN SHOT?!" lack of concern.

And they realize that, no, his Gift must be physical enhancement. And... uh. He can probably kick their ass. All of them.

And he's A.

Oh, and now he's mad.

OR.

You can have him not do that, and just slip out instead. Having the reveal of Desmond as A be at a more dramatic time has its own appeal, too. With Gifts flying, and everything. It honestly works better with this over-the-top story. So I think he'll just slip out and the actual reveal will be even more ridiculous.


	17. post-death, modern fragile + gifts light, 3

200306 FRI 0153 

I've been sitting on chapter, trying to decide whether or not to even post it as part of this universe. The story developed in a different direction than these scenes originally took it, and they don't really fit anymore. But still, it doesn't feel right not including them, all the same. Consider them non-canon for this universe, I guess.

Side-note: depression sucks ass.

190401 MON 0210

The ultimate goal is, of course, the most overdone and over-the-top climactic battle that this world can support. During Desmond's four years of rampaging all over the face of the global Templar organization, most everyone had _assumed_ that this new super-Assassin must have some Assassin-like Gift. What that Gift _was_ , everyone disagreed.

_No one_ was expecting Desmond to bust out _Light_ in the middle of the grand climax battle. It was practically the anti-Assassin Gift. Not, like, literally. Just metaphorically. No Assassin had been known to have it. It was rare enough as it was, and the personal qualities it took to have Light ignite in your soul just didn't... Well, no one had ever tried to recruit one into the Brotherhood. And if one had ever been born into it, they certainly did not stay.

Imagine, for example, trying to recruit Leonardo Da Vinci as an actual Assassin instead of just an ally. He wasn't the right qualities for a Light, either, mind you, but he was as equally unsuited for an Assassin, so he can demonstrate for the metaphor. So, no. No one was expecting that.

It was a big underground showdown in a _gigantic_ cavern, with Isu artifacts and Assassins and Templars and Gifts and (extraneous) explosions all over the place. Very dramatic. Not quite public, but about _as_ public as the Assassin-Templar grand-global-conspiracy-secret-war could be, with added magic _oomph_ from the Gifts levering portals and clairvoyance and networks and projection and shielding and dimension folding, etc, etc. Big deal.

Also big deal? When your goddess showed up. Because in a world with Gifts, obviously the Ones Before would be a little bit different too.

She looked straight at Desmond.

He froze without even looking at her, and after a painful moment his shoulders dropped. No, they... drooped?

He looked over at her with just his head, didn't even bother turning his body at all. His body which was just _radiating_ disappointment. "Hey, Minerva," he muttered.

The _entire cavern_ , which had been frantically shifting attention between the goddess and that which the goddess looked upon -- just stared at him in concert for one, united moment.

That was not the voice of a mortal looking upon a god. At all.

The face of the goddess creased in displeasure-- no, okay, she frowned. She frowned like a mother who had found her son out way too late at night. It didn't really... fit with the whole _divinity_ thing.

"Desmond," she intoned, displeased. Her voice echoed with tones that could be felt but not heard, and it resonated within the senses of those with the proper Gifts. "What are you doing here."

Desmond frowned right back at her, completely unphased. "It's not like I asked to be here -- I just woke up. _You're_ the ones who didn't think to make sure Juno would actually _die_ in her prison."

The goddess actually _gasped_ at that, her hand rising as she took a step back. "Impossible!" she said, breathless, "No mind could survive that eternity alone! We made sure!"

Desmond had finally shifted to face Minerva, and now put his hands on his hips as his mouth twisted to one side in distaste. "And her _specialty_ was the preservation and transfer of minds Minerva, just as much as her _spite_. _Yours_ was the Calculations. You _assumed_ \-- when you should have _checked_." His voice was quiet, grim and even as he spoke these words of reprimand to a goddess, as if he were an equal with every right to do so.

Her mouth thinned as she stared back at him, her hand closing against her chest. Then she looked away.

She _looked away_.

Desmond closed his eyes and sighed, raising one hand to his brow, then running it over his head to his neck, and looking at the ground. "Is there any way to save the Eye?" he asked, his voice still quiet, but tired now.

She looked back up to him, "So you did use it?"

"Of course I did," he said, quieter still.

And again, she looked away. "I wasn't sure..."

"It worked, as far as I can tell," he said, not quite looking at her, but the floor in her general direction. "I don't remember much. Obviously."

She cast a quick, darting glance at him at that.

To absolutely everyone else in that cavern, it was implicitly obvious that the two of them had _completely forgotten_ that there was anyone else in the room with them. All one hundred and two of the rest of them had effectively become invisible.

Not a single other person in that room any longer thought that Desmond Miles was anything close to human. If he ever was.

An Avatar of some kind, sleeping until what had slumbered within him awoke, maybe. Or a shell, perhaps, possessed by some ghost of a god long dead. Or even just a god playing at being mortal until he got bored of it, who even knew anymore.

But regardless, he sure as hell was not human right then. Not anymore.

And that was _before_ the god Jupiter decided to pop up and crash the party.

The fact that Desmond and Jupiter got on _really, really_ well made everyone _really, really_ nervous for a _lot_ of reasons.

On the other hand, the inexplicable explosions suddenly made a lot more sense.

190719 FRI 1700

Rather than timetravel, in this story, this is the point where Desmond is charged with gathering all the Lights, for some reason I can't fully remember. Probably the Solar Flare, maybe. The point was to establish some supporting structure and connection for the group as a whole, get them all working together. Being Lights, this was a hefty task. Probably so that they can all together come up with an alternative to setting Juno free, maybe. Or if not, then at least be prepared for her. _If_ this world has a functioning Eye in the Grand Temple at all, that is. They might not.

Because for this specific part of the idea, which came after I had most of the rest of it already written down, the Light Gifts were, in fact, the people who _should_ have had Isu heritage, but didn't. Because here that got wiped out of the timeline, possibly by Juno, but the _potential_ for it was there at one point, and the souls of these people somehow remembered it. Like, the memory of the timeline where they _were_ Isu hybrids somehow still resonated in the Grey or something, and the Gifts of humanity act as a link to that place, to allow all the "magic" and stuff to happen. All the Isu had Light, that was their Gift. So their should-have-been-hybrids, in this version, when connecting to the Grey to manifest their Gift, connect to that... or something. An Isu scientist fiddled with humans and gave them all these weird and varied lesser Gifts, but only those humans who _should_ have been Isu hybrids, but aren't in this timeline, have the spark of Light in their soul. But just a spark, nothing like the blaze they should have had. Desmond, being a genuine Isu hybrid, has the strongest song of Light in the world, and none of these people will ever learn the real reason why. They just think he was reborn this way, a reincarnation from _this_ timeline, from the way he talks to Minerva.

But yeah, in this idea he was not gonna leave to the past or any other universe for the duration of this lifetime; he's staying. So he has to make a place for himself, once he gets outed as a half-god by their standards.

Of course this continuation requires rewriting half of the story, as I had previously established no Lights in the Assassin Order. And this idea would pretty dang clearly mean that a _lot_ of the most prominent Assassins would either have been Lights or just not Manifested at all because they would have been Lights if they had. So... some work to be done here. Not impossible, but rather bothersome.

#### DELETED SCENES - Gifts, subtle

190401 MON 2050

An idea I think might be too negative for this story, was that in reality Bill had the really, really sick (for this world) idea to try to _influence_ the kind of Gift that would manifest in the children of the Brotherhood into those that would be useful to Assassins, somehow. Kid Desmond didn't know how but he was terrified all the same. He ran to avoid that, _before_ he manifested. It's an interesting idea, lots of room for drama, but doesn't fit the tone of this story at _all_. Think I'm going to skip it.

190401 MON 1030

Or how about we make the Gifts more subtle than that, so Desmond can match them without having to be boosted? Maybe even no Light at all, he could just be a straight copy from his world. He's got the Isu-genetics, so that's both physical enhancement _and_ limited sixth sense. Does he _really_ need anything else? Combine that with his extra-universal foreknowledge and status as the Isu's Chosen One and he can pull off a lot. Of course, this makes the entire story take a slightly calmer, slower tone; nowhere _near_ so bombastic. And that's half the fun.

190401 MON 1110

So, in a more subdued reality I could actually still stick with the Gift of Light, but how would that manifest in a more subdued-magic world? It's still magic with Gifts all over the place, but those Gifts would be less obvious, so how to do that. Like, an example might be Gifts would still be able to do real divination and such, but with fewer flashy side effects? Maybe just everything has fewer flashy side effects? Fewer physical effects in general, maybe. Maybe Desmond's physical enhancement would be a bigger deal in that case, though, which defeats the point.

But then, in this version, gods suddenly appearing visibly out of nowhere would be _even more impressive_ , wouldn't it? But they would be more like canon, more illusions with less power over the real world.

Probably even more arrogant for it, though, just like in canon, whereas in the idea with more flashy real world power they were more down to earth. When you lack _real_ power you compensate to hide it. Unless you are this version of Jupiter, and don't give a shit.

200227 THU 2141

In the midst of the battle, I know many were definitely too overwhelmed with shock and the rush of immediacy, the need to keep fighting, to truly process the meaning of what they were realizing even as they were realizing it. They just had to shove those new and shocking revelations to the side before they froze up any longer and got killed. The good side was they their enemies had the same shock, so they were even on that.

In the aftermath, once Desmond had vanished off to his new mission, they had more time to process as they licked their wounds.

The Assassin forums wasted no time at all before metaphorically catching on _fire_ from the storm that followed. The moderators tried and failed to keep things under some control, but Desmond had made an... impact.


	18. Summoned, 2

While Desmond was sleeping, every few days he took the kid into pseudo-Animus dreams. He couldn’t just leave the kid there sleeping forever, he just… couldn’t. So even though it took huge chunks out of his energy because without an actual Animus _he_ was the one doing all the work, he would still trawl through the kid’s DNA for safe scenes that weren’t too traumatic or dangerous, then let the kid watch over his shoulder as he played through them a few times before handing over the reigns to let him try them out himself. He needed to look through the kid’s genetic memory anyway, just to make sense of the differences between this world and his, because there were so _very_ many differences, so he might as well do something with that, right?

Desmond was careful to move at a pace the kid could handle, though, easing him up into tougher challenges only when he was ready for it, not pushing. He wasn’t going to be his dad. He refused.

He acted as a buffer for the Bleeding Effect too, controlling how much memory and skill leaked through and setting up mental partitions for the kid as best he could. There was nothing quite so quick or thorough for learning physical skills as the muscle memory of a controlled Bleeding Effect, after all, but he still went very slow. For the kid, that was.

For himself, he just dealt with the headaches, the dizziness and nausea, the occasional disassociation. He could handle it. When restricted to a child’s body, gaining any amount of whatever kind of strength he could as quickly as physically possible became _very_ important. Desmond just… bore through the consequences of that, because he was used to it and it was his choice and he _needed_ to, and kept it all far away from the kid.

Since this body hadn’t been used to Bleeding like his old one had, things had been pretty bad for a while before he had gotten things under control. Gradually, though, the kid’s body and brain adjusted, and Desmond weathered through the worst of it to some equilibrium.

He kind of had to do all that anyway, really, since like hell was he letting the kid get kidnapped by Abstergo the way Desmond had been. Which meant the information locked in the kid’s DNA had to be brought out another way, or neither the kid nor the world would be prepared for what was coming.

He was still working on an alternative to that final choice at the end, though. Assuming everything matched up and played out the same, that was. He was still hoping to find something in the kid’s DNA or in the Abstergo databases and secret vaults he was eventually planning to raid that might point out some difference there, between his world and this one. Despite all the _other_ differences, he hadn’t found it yet.

The first step in making the Bleeding safe for the kid was doing all the hard work ahead of time. Each and every memory was lived through at least a couple of times before he decided whether or not it was safe for the kid to see. (And also so he didn’t look stupid in front of him, because that would just be embarrassing.)

To properly act as buffer for the worst of the Bleeding Effect, Desmond often kept the kid to an observer role for the bulk of the memories selected for a “shared” night, essentially looking over his shoulder while he ran through most of the memories for him. Only at the end, with the safest and mildest of memories selected specifically for the kid to explore, did Desmond step back and let him take charge. Even then Desmond was still there, mentally hovering over the kid’s shoulder, ready to take over again if the kid needed it.

Desmond did his best to only let the kid see the memories that while useful or interesting or fun, still wouldn’t scar him too badly. There were some, though, that Desmond could just… _feel_ were important. Important enough that the kid would _need_ to watch them eventually. Unfortunately, they were also usually pretty damn traumatizing.

Desmond was as careful doing it as he could be, working his way up to the memories that explained those stories obliquely, gently, omitting as much of the worst parts that he could. He talked with the kid a lot when it came to those memories, why he was showing them to him, what was in them, how the kid felt about it, etc, both before and after, and also very frequently pausing the memories mid-stream to talk some more. It took several nights, sometimes weeks, just to get through a single one of those awful but important memories, because he kept aborting the process until he felt the kid was handling it okay. It wasn’t like they didn’t have the time, after all, even if it was hard on Desmond’s energy levels. 

Maintaining a pseudo-Animus dreamscape was not an _easy_ thing, and while the White Room he finally managed to construct in his mind was about as bare bones as you could get, it still sapped him to exhaustion every time he pulled the kid into it. It was worth it, though. The kid deserved better than this, but it was the best he could do. He hadn’t even been sure doing the Animus without an Animus would even be possible until he had actually done it, and he still wasn’t sure how he had managed that. He was doing so much of this by feel, in a second-hand body, and just hoping it would all be enough.


	19. Communication Difficulties, 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In accordance with my commenters: this chapter has a warning for a sudden dark turn of tone. Nothing happens to Desmond or any other main character, but it shifts the feel of the story.

Desmond stared up at Ezio flatly. "You... honestly can't understand a damn word I'm saying. _As_ a language. At all."

Ezio cooed some more of that gibberish that was clearly a language, just not any human language Desmond had heard before. Ezio then patted his head.

"...You think I'm fucking barking or something, don't you? What the hell kind of magic is _on_ with this world..."

It wasn't like Desmond hadn't tried everything he could think of for alternate means of communication. Miming charades, drawing pictures or his name in the dirt, pointing and naming things with _really obvious_ facial expressions and over exaggerated questioning tones of voice.

Not a single damn thing had worked. It wasn't just Ezio, either; _nobody_ here seemed to be able to understand that he was, in fact, trying to communicate with them. Or that he was sapient at all.

They treated him like a freaking _pet_.

Desmond had looked himself over as closely and critically as he could, even snitching Ezio's tiny shaving mirror just to get as good a look at his face as he could. He looked like himself. Nothing had changed.

And yet for some reason these people thought he was some kind of animal. Sure, they were a little bigger than normal humans, and their features had a couple weird differences, but overall they still looked basically human. There was no goddamn reason for this kind of disconnect. And he knew Ezio well enough, at least, to tell that this wasn't cruelty or dominance or disdain or whatever. They just _honestly couldn't understand him_.

He might not know their language, but _he_ at least was clearly able to see they were talking _in_ a language. And were sapient. Desmond had no idea what was going on here.

He spent the first four days very confused, just letting Ezio coddle him like the adorable animal he apparently thought Desmond to be, because he was at just that much of a loss of what else to do.

And then he saw the small band of another race of people encountering Ezio's, and _both_ of them showed the exact same communication difficulty _with each other_.

These both seemed like native peoples of this world, and yet both apparently saw the other as just... wild, non-sapient things, going by what happened. They were very clearly talking to their own people, wearing clothing and carrying similar tools, but to the other party they made the sorts of motions one made when sighting a damn _bear_ or pack of wolves or something. There was no attempts at communicating via body language beyond that, not even the most basic of gestures that all human-like beings should be able to interpret. They certainly didn't even bother trying to see if the other party shared any common languages.

It was fascinating, shone a tiny bit of light on Desmond's own situation, but overall was just even more baffling than before. And was also slowly, subtly horrifying.

If it had just been himself, then Desmond could have... sort of excused it, if he stretched the concept and squinted. He wasn't just alien here, he didn't just _not belong_ , he was quite literally from outside the context of the universe itself. And maybe, he had thought, maybe this world just... couldn't cope with that. It was the only thing he had come up with that made sense. That the universe itself was somehow rejecting his presence there, and so... no one could fully interact with him. In that idea, he was lucky he wasn't stuck as a ghost or something worse.

But now? Now it looked like this was wider spread. There was... something here that stopped people from understanding that others were, in fact, people. The small band of slightly minotaur-looking people had ended up in a completely pointless and unnecessary fight with Ezio's larger more-or-less-human band, and several were lost on both sides before they finally scraped by each other on the forest road they had both been traveling.

Desmond was guessing there was something seriously dangerous out in that forest. When Desmond had once wandered in that vague direction in his boredom, the young guy set to watching him at the time had near-panic on his face as he rushed up to cut him off and carefully herd him back toward the rest of the party. He had cast worried glances back over his shoulder at the forest the whole way. Desmond thought the guy might be a student of Ezio's or something, maybe a subordinate. Poor guy had nearly crapped himself several times in panic over tasks that Ezio handed him when Ezio was busy with other things. Like looking after Desmond, apparently. Though Desmond got a rota of minders when Ezio couldn't keep an eye on him himself, Desmond had noticed this young guy sort of got an unfair share of the gofer and grunt work. He had to be the greenhorn of the group. He got called so many different things, most of which if Desmond was right were probably insulting, that Desmond still wasn't actually sure what the guy's name was.

Point was, when the minotaur-people came up the road in the other direction neither band was willing to go into the forest. Because they couldn't _talk_ the simple, peaceful option of just splitting the road and walking past wasn't an option at all. Imagine politely asking a pack of wolves to let you walk past and not eat you.

When neither party backed down and ran away to the other's shouts and making themselves look large and dangerously waving their various sharp pointy sticks... Well, fighting was just... inevitable, it looked like. As pointless and sad as it was impossible to stop. None of the minotaur-people seemed to see him as much of a threat, at least, any more than Ezio's people did, so Desmond could at the very least thank his luck for that.

If he was stuck in some awful world where nobody could see the sapience in any race but their own, at least he personally didn't have to deal with also looking _threatening_ on top of that. Being treated as a pet because Ezio's people thought he was cute was annoying, but... better than being treated like a wild wolf or something, like these other people were.

They had kids in their band. Some of them saw a parent killed.


	20. Communication Difficulties, 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See, it gets better!

Desmond was not **expecting** that the ones who finally _would_ be able to talk and act reasonably, or at least rationally, in this world, would be the **animals**.

Considering his own position here, he maybe should have. But seriously, who expects talking horses?

They weren't _actually_ horses, obviously, any more than they were _actually_ animals -- but they sure did look a lot like horses, bar the flaming black mane and tail, and the little horns, and the fangs, and... well they were shaped mostly like horses. They were also harnessed to a goddamn carriage like horses, with fancy leather reigns and everything. No bridles or bits, however, which may have been due to the fangs.

He couldn't actually understand them, of course, any more than anybody else around here -- but just like a lot of the other strange-looking people in this world, they were still very clearly sapient with their own language and everything. He couldn't understand a word of their hisses or whinnies, but he recognized _talking_ when he saw it, especially when it was so clearly mocking the guy who was trying to take care of the expensive-looking carriage.

What was different from everybody else was, first: like him, they were being treated as tame animals instead of wild ones. And second: when he walked by and said, "Hey," with a polite nod because he had gotten into the habit no matter how many times he didn't get the reaction he was looking for -- this time he _did_.

Both of the horse-people turned their heads and looked right at him.

He stopped in his tracks, obviously, and did his absolute damndest to learn how to communicate with a foreign species in two minutes or less, because that was all the time he had before he couldn't bat away the arms pulling him along with the rest of Ezio's group anymore. One of Ezio's burlier people just rolled his eyes and picked him up.

In those two minutes, though, Desmond was finally -- _finally_ \-- able to confirm that he wasn't the only sane one here. There were others who could communicate with other species -- the horse-people actually tried to _use different languages_ with him, to find a common ground. A sort of chittering staccato language, a grumbly low rolling one, and a light piping flutey one. None of them sounded remotely human, but they were all still clearly _languages_. In turn, he tried all his verbal languages, sign language and simple charades, pointing and naming, and drawing in the dirt. They used their own sharp claw-hooves to draw with him when that clearly worked best for them all, though they did at least share their names first.

He knew their _names_. He had no idea how starved he was to simply being acknowledged as an equal, intelligent being until they returned his desperate, "Desmond," with a chuff-half-whinny and a hiss-chuckle-chuff sound with clear gestures to show those were each of their names. They couldn't quite pronounce his name but they very clearly tried, and he did his absolute best to do the same, and it felt _so good_. They knew his name. Someone in this world knew his name.

He fucking memorized theirs right then and there.

It just figured that, like him, they were being treated as dumb animals. He supposed that in a world where most people couldn't do anything else, the smart folks just decided it was best to get along. Less bloodshed that way, he did have to admit. Still seemed... demeaning, but then, he was effectively Ezio's pet, so he couldn't exactly talk, could he?

It felt almost physically painful to be carried away from the Double-Chuff-Short-Whinny people, but luckily Ezio's band was staying near this little way station of a town of their species for a few days to recover supplies and prepare for the next leg of their journey to wherever it was they were going. Desmond spent nearly every moment sneaking out to talk to the two Double-Chuff-Short-Whinny, expanding his knowledge of this world as fast and dirty as possible as they traded sketches in the dirt back and forth. He also tried to learn as much of the light-fluted-piping language as possible, because Hiss-Chuckle-Chuff indicated that was the most common shared language he was likely to need. It felt almost half singing, very bird-like, and it was hell to learn but he still crammed as much as possible while learning the basics of the world itself at the same time.

He was pretty sure Chuff-Half-Whinny and Hiss-Chuckle-Chuff thought he was a very sheltered slave child of parents who had also been raised in a restricted environment, or who had perhaps died when he was very young, and so he had never met any other talking people before. Considering how little he knew, and the way Ezio's people treated him, he didn't blame them.


	21. Communication Difficulties, 3

Despite everything he had worked so very hard to learn, Desmond was still utterly unprepared for the dragon.

Ezio's people, judging by their panic, were also unprepared for the dragon. Judging by the way they froze and stared, jaws slack and eyes bulging, when Desmond himself stepped forward and started talking to the dragon, they weren't prepared for that either.

A small, slightly hysterical part of his mind couldn't help but wonder what it looked like to them. Was it like a cat stepping forward to meow at a dragon who actually stopped to listen? He could understand the stares of uncomprehending shock.

Since Desmond hadn't been prepared for a dragon that could _fucking speak English_ , they could join the club.

Desmond had by then learned four distinctly different and almost entirely inhuman languages to varying degrees in order to communicate with the network of sentient animal-shaped peoples that populated this world under noses of the oblivious humanoid races. But not once had he heard anything that sounded like it might come from home, either from the animal-shaped peoples or the Babel-Cursed humanoids. (He had no idea what the Curse's name would actually translate to in a human language, and this thing was a hell of a lot more than that name implied, but it worked for him, so that was what he called it.)

And yet here this dragon was speaking in what sounded very much like perfect, Midwest-accented American English.

It had to be magic. Something like Allspeak maybe, or a kind of telepathy or illusion. Either way universal translators were apparently a thing for _some_ species, and no, he wasn't bitter at all...

Hopefully luckily for Desmond, the dragon had also not apparently been prepared for someone capable of speech in the band of humanoids. It looked at him curiously, that dangerously detached calculation behind its eyes measuring him as he tried to keep his stupid humanoids from being roasted. Or eaten. Or squashed.

He prayed they wouldn't do anything too stupid while he was talking. Humanoids were so... frustrating to take care of. That fucking Curse made them almost impossible to manage, it was ridiculous.

Thankfully, this time they seemed too frozen with simultaneous terror and disbelief, and he had the time to talk things out with the dragon, Long-Low-Growl-Click-CRACK-"Har"-Long-Hiss.

Desmond had gotten used to the names. When people didn't have humanoid throats, languages could get... pretty interesting. He just wondered why Long-Low-Growl-Click-CRACK-"Har"-Long-Hiss had a "har" sound in the middle of his otherwise very draconic-sounding name. It made Desmond want to nickname him "Harsh" and he didn't need anyone telling him that shortening a dragon's name was probably a _bad idea_.

In the end Desmond had to bat away his stupid interfering humanoids only for a bit before Ezio's sharp call got them to pull back in confusion and let Desmond raid the party's food supplies in peace. All of it.

They would be in a tight spot for the next stretch of the journey -- which he _**still**_ didn't know the destination of -- but better to be forced to forage and hunt and be a bit hungry than face a dragon, frankly. His humanoids watched, mostly confused and upset, as he huffed and sweated his way through dragging the impressive food stores away from everything else and toward Long-Low-Growl-Click-CRACK-"Har"-Long-Hiss.

Ezio and a few of the cannier ones were watching with calculating speculation instead, wariness and watchfulness replacing the panic and fear of before. They wouldn't be able to make the connections that would allow any communication due to the Curse, of course, but that didn't mean they were _completely_ stupid. This was all... a little obvious, after all. Desmond idly wondered, in the part of his brain not too focused on the tense near-disaster this situation still hovered near, if they would actually come to any correct conclusions. He doubted it.

When Desmond finally finished, panting in front of Long-Low-Growl-Click-CRACK-"Har"-Long-Hiss and his offering of all the food he could find in the group's supplies, the dragon bent down to sniff delicately at the haphazard pile. He rolled one great eye to lazily examine Desmond's nervous form, and after letting him hang for a bit, languorously permitted Desmond to usher his stiff and uncooperative humanoids past.

Desmond had to physically pull and shove to get things started before Ezio started relaying low, quiet orders, his sharp eyes flicking between Desmond and Long-Low-Growl-Click-CRACK-"Har"-Long-Hiss. That finally got people moving a bit more quickly, and they eventually edged past the lounging dragon watching them with slightly cruel amusement as Ezio and his top people prodded them along. Desmond was the last, bowing and thanking Long-Low-Growl-Click-CRACK-"Har"-Long-Hiss's generosity as politely as possible before following along behind his hapless humanoids.

He really, really hated this fucking world-wide Babel Curse.


	22. Summoned, 3

Desmond watched the angel live his life as a very blurry dream, with no clear details. He never did figure out how to make sense of the angel's thoughts, the strange angles just as impossible for his mental hands to grasp as they ever were. But he could still get the general gist of things, and though the angel _was_ sometimes busy or distracted, he _did_ listen, just like he promised. He always tried to explain why he was doing what he was doing, and ultimately followed Desmond's wishes even if it made things _really_ difficult for him in the long run. The angel just dealt with the consequences that came with that, even if Desmond hadn't ever meant for some of that to happen.

Desmond learned... a lot, dreaming of the angel living his life for him, as best as the angel was able to. It wasn't the same as living it himself, he knew that. But he lived a lot more in his dreams than many other boys ever would have gotten to even by his body's current physical teen age. The angel had done his very best.

So he wasn't the shivering, broken child that had called for help all those years ago, when he finally opened his eyes again.

He looked out and saw several people he only vaguely recognized from his angel's dreams, and a few that looked more familiar, all of whom were gawking at him. He looked with his own eyes, standing on his own feet, and for the first time in years, he was alone in his body.

It felt cold.

He looked down at his aching, stinging left hand, and saw the gap where the ring finger used to be. He turned his hand over and detachedly examined the charred stump. It looked like it had been cut off with a laser or something. He felt... kind of floaty.

He missed his angel.

He looked up again, glancing around for the glowing see-through woman who had taken his angel away, but she was gone too.

Desmond had given his permission, he knew it had been necessary. The fate of the world had been at stake, he had actually _heard_ everything that woman said, clear and distinct, unlike anyone or anything else during the entire dream of his life.

Desmond still missed him. The sacrifice of his finger to give his angel an anchor to travel on, in comparison, was hardly noticeable.

Desmond flexed his hand a bit, the pain spiking sharply up his arm as he did, but it was nothing he couldn't handle. His angel had always been so cautious, so careful in the memory simulations in the dream, always trying to hold back from pushing Desmond too far or too fast. But Desmond had been very used to pain already by then, no matter his young age, and nothing the angel was willing to expose him to had ever frightened him. Desmond had always been the one to have to push the boundaries.

Those simulations, those strange past memories, were the closest thing to _awake_ he ever really got while he was dreaming, so he pushed a lot. Further than he should have maybe, but the angel always tried to be careful, always tried to take care of him. It was just pretty obvious he didn't really know how to do that, what to do with a human child, so he ended up indulging Desmond perhaps a bit more than was wise.

Desmond was directly hooked into the same brain as the angel, though -- it was _his_ brain they were sharing -- so whatever consequences the angel suffered for indulging Desmond, he wasn't quite as successful at hiding from Desmond as he liked to think. Desmond learned a lot just from watching his own choices be reflected in the angel's suffering. He tried to be better, to be wiser, to be smarter, because it was obvious the angel wasn't changing anytime soon. Desmond could _feel_ the angel's guilt and sense of responsibility and just how deep they went, even if he couldn't understand any of his actual thoughts.

He had _felt_ how outraged his angel had been at the mere thought of asking Desmond to sacrifice part of his body to help safely anchor the angel's travel, how immediate and instinctive the _no_ had been. Then the woman had looked into Desmond's eyes, and Desmond had heard her words _directly in his mind_ , asking _him_ if he would be willing to make this sacrifice... And Desmond chose to say yes.

Because he had actually been able to hear their discussion, fully, clearly, unmuffled, unmuddled, and he knew that this must be the safest and best option for his angel. Yet again, his angel was trying to sacrifice of himself to spare Desmond, yet again he was attempting to shield Desmond with his own suffering... This time, though, Desmond could make a sacrifice back. And the angel couldn't say no.

He had been angry, _so_ angry, Desmond had felt how angry he'd been, but it had been at the glowing woman, not at Desmond, and he had still grudgingly choked it down and accepted Desmond's choice.

The only reason the angel had been reluctant to leave Desmond in the first place was the cost to Desmond himself, and the position of vulnerability Desmond would be left in afterward without the angel shielding him anymore. They were general enough concepts that Desmond had been able to _feel_ that, too, the wariness of potential cost, the worry for Desmond without the angel there to protect him.

But neither of those were good reasons to keep the angel there with him, and Desmond knew it. Even if the angel might actually stay, if he asked... he couldn't ask. It wouldn't be right. The angel was _needed_ elsewhere, and Desmond more than anyone understood that. He couldn't keep him there.

The idea of being on his own, of being _alone_ again, without his angel there to comfort him, shield him, be his warmth and shelter... It was terrifying. More than he could wrap his mind around. But he still knew it was the right thing to do.

It had been fuzzier, as it wasn't directly conversing with the glowing woman, but Desmond was aware the angel had made vague threats and extorted promises from some of the people present to take care of Desmond in his absence. To make sure, especially, that William Miles never got near him again.

He looked back up at all those people who were still staring at him rudely, and squared his shoulders. Time to pretend everything was just fine, and completely under control.

Maybe he could trick himself into pretending he was his angel, the way they had played at being his ancestors in the dream. That might help.


	23. pre-death, ac2, modern mission assist

Desmond was jarred out of the middle of an Animus session. He blinked open eyes blurry from the sudden, improper waking just in time to see Rebecca hurrying past him. She hadn't even finished shutting down the Animus fully.

Desmond frowned, his thoughts still a bit disjointed, and turned his head, trying to see anybody else. He couldn't see them -- but he could hear them, now that he thought about it. All three of his team sounded like they were at Shaun's desk, voices tense and stressed.

He took a moment to brace himself, then slowly heaved his unsteady body up from the Animus chair. He had to hold on to it for a moment as he stood there, wavering, before he could straighten and start walking to the rest of his team.

He found them all wearing headsets, focused entirely on the various screens. Desmond only had to listen in for a minute or so to figure out what happened.

A team had gotten in a _bad_ situation. They might not make it out, from the sound of it. Shaun had told him when Desmond first got here that he worked support for teams in the field. Desmond hadn't realized he meant that so actively. Desmond swallowed and clenched his hand as he followed some of the panicked chatter on the screens, the video bouncing around with the frantic running of the agents. Fuck, he wished he could help.

Without meaning to, his Eagle Vision flipped on, as if that would do anything here. He almost flipped it right back off again -- except that he noticed a red outline on one of the screens right before an enemy appeared from cover and started shooting.

Desmond froze for a moment, thinking very hard, and staring even harder at all the screens with their chaotic, terrified retreats and the constant scrolling text of those trying to help.

Then he went to Lucy, not even bothering with Shaun, and told her he could help. It took a bit of bugging her, and then outright shouting that his Eagle Vision worked through the video, before he got her to listen. Eventually he did get his own headset though.

Considering he hadn't had _any_ training on how to cooperate with other field teams, he didn't get a keyboard and monitor like the rest. Instead Desmond stood behind the others, and when he Saw something he darted a hand forward to point at it with a short color description. His own team then immediately relayed that in the appropriate terms so the field team actually knew what to look for. Desmond wanted to learn that himself after this so he wouldn't need the translation if this happened again, but right then he was too focused on the dozen different open windows.

Gold, white, red, even blue outlines a couple of times. They once very narrowly avoided a friendly fire incident because of his warning. As the minutes passed, the complaints from Shaun and questions from the field team about the change in tactics tapered off.

Because it was working. Desmond _was_ helping. He saw the red-outlined enemies and traps several seconds before anyone else could, spotted safe white paths no one else noticed, and instantly zeroed in on the gold defense targets they needed to hit in order to escape with almost no effort at all.

They still lost a couple people, but the bulk of the ten-man team actually managed to get out of there, and no small part of that was because of him.

By the time everything was done and the video windows on the monitors finally went dark, Desmond was as exhausted as he'd ever been after an Animus session. But he also felt weirdly floaty, almost a little giddy. There was a deep feeling of accomplishment here that was more visceral than what he got from his ancestors' memories.

He was also soaked in sweat, and now that he was focusing on it, that floaty feeling was light-headedness. When had he last eaten something?


	24. post-death, litrpg

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In other news, depression sucks. Do not recommend. Have a chapter.

Waking up from death into a damn LitRPG world had not been on his list of possible Things To Expect From The Afterlife.

The very first thing he saw and heard when he opened his eyes was a slightly translucent blue square hovering in front of his face, and a bright _Ding!_ ringing out as if congratulating a child on accomplishing something in a game. It was jarring.

Reading over the welcome package, which was... brief and uninformative and overall almost deliberately useless, a frown settled between his eyes. Reading further that his particular manner of entry into this life had been so "unusual" that the System was having some Technical Difficulties translating some of his options, he gave a dubious squint. And then reading that due to further Technical Difficulties his level progression, achievements, and titles would be... _pending review_ for an unspecified amount of time? Yeah. Sure.

Even in the Afterlife, of course this shit would happen.

Desmond sighed, decided he would just... ignore it, and do what he could to make the best of things. He was used to that.


End file.
